ON THE 
AUTHOEIZED VERSION 

OF THE 

NEW TESTAMENT. 



ON THE 



AUTHORIZED VERSION 



OP THE 



NEW TESTAMENT: 



m COJ^NEHON WITH SOME EECENT PKOPOSALS 
EOE ITS KEVISION. 



BY 



RICHAED CHENEYIX TRENCH, D.D, 

DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. 




LONDON: 
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 

1858. 

[2%e Author reserves the right of translation.'] 






<^^ 

V 



LONDON : 

SAVILIi AND EDWAKDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET, 

COVENT GARDEN. 



PREFACE. 



i WORD or two, which is all that I have to say by way 
of preface, will not refer so much to the book as to 
the form of the book. Were the materials of this little 
volume to be disposed over again, I should certainly 
prefer to follow in their disposition that simpler arrange- 
ment which Professor Scholefield adopted in his Hints 
for an Improved Translation of the New Testament. 
He has there followed throughout the order of the books 
of Scripture ; and, as these passed in succession under his 
review, he has made such observations as seemed to him 
desirable, without attempting any more ambitious arrange- 
ment. After I had advanced so far as to make it almost 
impossible to recede, I found continual reason to regret that 
I had chosen any other plan. I am not indeed without 
the strongest conviction that a book, well and happily 
arranged on the scheme of rather bringing subjects to a 
point, and considering together matters which have a 
certain unity in themselves, both ought to be, and would 
be, more interesting and instructive than one in which the 
same materials were disposed in such a merely fortuitous 



VI PREFACE. 

sequence. But this arrangement is very difficult to attain. 
I cannot charge myself with having spared either thought 
or pains in striving after it ; but am painfully conscious 
how little has been my success, and how unsatisfactory 
the result. Some things indeed already, as they escape 
the confusion of MS., and assume the painful clearness of 
print, I see might be in fitter place than they are ; but 
much refuses still to group itself in any satisfying combina- 
tion. This acknowledgment is not made with the desire 
to anticipate and avert the censure which this fault in the 
composition of the book, to speak nothing of other more 
serious faults, may deserve ; but only to suggest that a 
better and happier distribution, though doubtless possible, 
was yet not so easy and obvious as one who had never 
made the endeavour to attain it might perhaps take for 
granted. 



Vf ESTMINSTEE, 

June 24, 185^ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE 

INTEODUCTORY REMARKS . I 



CHAPTEE II. 

ON THE ENGLISH OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION ... 9 

CHAPTER III. 

ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION 34 

CHAPTER IV. 

ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED ... 47 

CHAPTER V. 

ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED 62 

CHAPTER VI. 

ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, OR PLACED IN 

THE MARGIN 72 

CHAPTER VII. 

ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR IN OUR VERSION . 85 

CHAPTER VIII. 

ON SOME QUESTIONABLE RENDERINGS OF WORDS . . . . I03 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

PAGE 

ON SOME WORDS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED II 3 

CHAPTER X. 

ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT AGAINST OUR 

VERSION 126 

CHAPTER XI. 

ON THE BEST MEANS OF CARRYING OUT A REVISION . . 1 33 



CHAPTER I. 

INTKODUCTOKY REMARKS. 

TT is clear that the question, Are we, or are we not, to 
-■- have a new translation of Scripture ? or rather, — since 
few would propose this who did not wish to loosen 
from its anchors the whole religious life of the English 
people — Shall we, or shall we not, have a new revision 
of the Authorized Version? is one which is presenting 
itself more and more famiharly to the minds of men. 
This, indeed, is not by any means the first time that 
this question has been earnestly discussed ; but that 
which differences the present agitation of the matter 
from preceding ones is, that on all former occasions 
the subject was only debated among scholars and 
divines, and awoke no interest in circles beyond them. 
The present is apparently the first occasion on which it 
has taken the slightest hold of the popular mind. But 
now indications of the interest which it is awakening 
reach us from every side. America is sending us the 
instalments — it must be owned not very encouraging 
ones — of a New Version, as fast as she can. The wish 
for a revision has for a considerable time been working 
among Dissenters here ; by the voice of one of these 
it has lately made itself heard in Parliament, and by 
the mouth of a Regius Professor in Convocation. Our 
Reviews, and not those only which are specially dedi- 

B 



a INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

cated to religious subjects, begin to deal with the ques- 
tion of revision. There are, or a little while since there 
were, frequent letters in the newspapers, urging, or re- 
monstrating against, such a step — few of them, it is 
true, of much value, yet at the same time showing how 
many minds are now occupied with the subject. 

It is manifestly a question of such immense importance, 
the issues depending on a right solution of it are so vast 
and solemn, that it may well claim a temperate and wise 
discussion. Nothing is gained on the one hand by vague 
and general charges of inaccuracy brought against our 
Version ; they require to be supported by detailed proofs. 
Nothing, on the other hand, is gained by charges and 
insinuations against those who urge a revision, as though 
they desired to undermine the foundations of the religious 
life and faith of England ; were Socinians in disguise, or 
Papists — Socinians who hoped that, in another translation, 
the witness to the divinity of the Son and of the Spirit 
might prove less clear than in the present — Papists who 
desired that the authority of the English Scripture, the 
only Scripture accessible to the great body of the people, 
might be so shaken and rendered so doubtful, that men 
would be driven to their Church, and to its authority, as the 
only authority that remained. As little is the matter 
advantaged, or in any way brought nearer to a settlement, 
by sentimental appeals to the fact that this, which it is 
now proposed to alter, has been the Scripture of our 
childhood, in which we and so many generations before us 
first received the tidings of everlasting life. All this, well 
as it may deserve to be considered, yet as argument 
at all deciding the question, will sooner or later have to be 
cleared away ; and the facts of the case, apart from cries, 
and insinuations, and suggestions of evil motives and ap- 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 6 

peals to the religious passions and prejudices of the day, 
apart, too, from feehngs which in themselves demand the 
highest respect, will have to be dealt with in that spirit of 
seriousness and earnestness which a matter affecting so 
profoundly the whole moral and spiritual life of the English 
people, not to speak of nations which are yet unhorn, 
abundantly deserves. 

In the pages which follow, I propose not mainly to advo- 
cate a revision, nor mainly to dissuade one, but to consider 
rather the actual worth of our present Translation — its 
strength, and also any weaknesses which may affect that 
strength — its beauty, and also the blemishes which impair 
that beauty in part, — the grounds on which a new revision 
of it may be demanded, — the inconveniences, difficulties, 
the dangers it may be, which would attend such a revi- 
sion ; and thus, so far as this lies in my power, to assist 
others, who may not have been able to give special atten- 
tion to this subject, to form a decision for themselves. I 
will not in so, doing pretend that my own mind is entirely 
in equilibrium on the subject. On the whole, I am per- 
suaded that a revision ought to come ; I am convinced 
that it will come. Not, however, I would trust, as yet ; for 
we are not as yet in any respect prepared for it ; the Greek 
and the English which should enable us to bring this to 
a successful end might, it is to be feared, be wanting ahke. 
Nor certainly do I underrate the other difficulties which 
would beset such an enterprize ; they look, some of them, 
the more serious to me the more I contemplate them : 
and yet, believing that this mountain of difficulty will have 
to be surmounted, I can only trust and believe that it, ]ike 
so many other mountains, will not on nearer approach 
prove so formidable as at a distance it appears. Only let the 
Church, when the due time shall arrive, address herself to 

b2 



4 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

this work with earnest prayer for the divine guidance, her 
conscience bearing her witness that in no spirit of idle inno- 
vation, that only out of dear love to her Lord and his 
truth, and out of an allegiance to that truth which overbears 
every other consideration, with an earnest longing to pre- 
sent his Word, whereof she is the guardian, in all its sin- 
cerity to her children, she has undertaken this hard and 
most perilous task, and in some way or other every diffi- 
culty will be overcome. Whatever pains and anxieties the 
work may cost her, she will feel herself abundantly re- 
warded if only she is able to offer God's Word to her 
children, not indeed free from all marks of human infirmity 
clinging to its outward form, — for we shall have God's treasure 
in earthen vessels still, — but with some of these blemishes 
which she now knows of removed, and altogether approach- 
ing nearer to that which she desires to see it — namely, a 
work without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing ; a perfect 
copy of an archetype that is perfect. 

In the meantime, while the matter is still in suspense 
and debate, while it occupies, as it needs must, the anxious 
thoughts of many, it cannot misbecome those who have 
been specially led by their duties or their inclinations to a 
more close comparison of the English Version with the 
original Greek, to offer whatever they have to offer, be that 
little or much, for the helping of others toward a just and 
dispassionate judgment, and one founded upon evidence, in 
egard to the question at issue. And if they consider that 
a revision ought to come, or, whether desirable or not, that 
it will come, they must wish to throw in any contribution 
which they have to make toward the better accomplish- 
ing of this object. Assuming that they have any right 
to mingle in the controversy at all, they may reasonably 
hope, that even if much which they bring has long ago 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 5 

been brought forward by others, or must be set aside from 
one cause or another, yet that something will remain, and 
will survive that rigid proof to which every suggestion of 
change should be submitted. And in a matter of such high 
concernment as this the least is much. To have cast in even 
a mite into this treasury of the Lord, to have brought one 
smallest stone which it is permitted to build into the walls 
of his house, to have detected one smallest blemish that 
would not otherwise have been removed, to have made in 
any way whatever a single suggestion of lasting value 
toward the end here in view, is something for which to be 
for ever thankful. It is in that intention, with this hope, 
that I have ventured to publish these pages. 

The work, indeed, which I thus undertake, cannot be 
regarded as a welcome one. There is often a sense of 
something ungenerous, if not actually unjust, in passing 
over large portions of our Version, where all is clear, correct, 
lucid, happy, awaking continual admiration by the rhythmic 
beauty of the periods, the instinctive art with which the 
style rises and falls with its subject, the skilful surmounting 
of difficulties the most real, the diligence with which almost 
all which was happiest in preceding translations has been 
retained and embodied in the present ; the constant 
solemnity and seriousness which, by some nameless skill, is 
made to rest upon all ; in passing over all this and much 
more with a few general words of recognition, and then 
stopping short and urging some single blemish or incon- 
sistency, and dwelling upon and seeming to make much 
of this, which often in itself is so little. For the flaws 
pointed out are frequently so small and so slight, that it 
might almost seem as if the objector had armed his eye 
with a microscope for the purpose of detecting that which 
otherwise would have escaped notice, and which, even if it 



b INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

were faulty, might well have been suffered to pass by, 
unchallenged and lost sight of in the general beauty of 
the whole. The work of Momus is never, or at least never 
ought to be, other than an unwelcome one. 

Still less do we like the office of faultfinder, when that 
whose occasional petty flaws we are pointing out, has 
claims of special gratitude and reverence from us. It 
seems at once an unthankfulness and almost an impiety to 
dwell on errors in that to which we for ourselves owe so 
much ; to which the whole religious life of our native land 
owes so much ; which has been the nurse and fosterer of 
our national piety for hundreds of years ; which, associated 
with so much that is sad and joyful, sweet and solemn, in 
the heart of every one, appeals as much to our affections 
as to our reason. 

But admitting all this, we may still reconcile ourselves 
to this course by such considerations as the following; — and 
first, that a passing by of the very much which is excellent, 
with a dwelling on the very little which is otherwise, lies 
in the necessity of the task undertaken. What is good, 
what is perfect, may have, and ought to have, its goodness 
freely and thankfully acknowledged ; but it offers com- 
paratively little matter for observation. It is easy to 
exhaust the language of admiration, even when that admi- 
ration is intelligently and thoughtfully rendered. We are 
not tempted to pause till we meet with something which 
challenges dissent, nor can we avoid being mainly occupied 
with this. 

Then, too, if it be urged that many of the objections 
made are small and trivial, it can only be replied, that 
nothing is really small or trivia], which has to do with the 
Word of God, which helps or hinders the exactest setting 
forth of that Word. That Word lends an importance and 



INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. T 

a dignity to everything connected with it. The more deeply 
we are persuaded of the inspiration of Holy Scripture, the 
more intolerant we shall be of any lets and hindrances to 
the arriving at a perfect understanding of that which the 
mouth of God has spoken. In setting forth his Word in 
another language from that in which it was first uttered, 
we may justly desire such an approximation to perfection 
as the instrument of language, — to which, marvellous organ 
of mind as it is, there yet cleaves so much of human 
imperfection, — will allow ; and this not merely in greatest 
things, but in smallest. 

Nor yet need the occasional shortcomings of our Trans- 
lators be noted in any spirit of irreverence or disparagement. 
Some of the errors into which they fell were inevitable, 
and belonged in no proper sense to them more than to the 
whole age in which they lived, as for instance, in the matter 
of the Greek article. Unless we were to demand a miracle, 
and that their scholarship should have been altogether on 
a different level from that of their age, this could not have 
been otherwise. We may reasonably require of such a 
company of men, undertaking so great a work, that their 
knowledge should approve itself on a level with the very 
best which their age could supply ; even as it was ; but 
more than this it would be absurd and unfair to demand. 
If other of their mistakes might have been avoided, as is 
plain from the fact that predecessors or cotemporaries did 
avoid them, and yet were not avoided by them, this only 
shows that the marks of human weakness and infirmity, 
which cleave to every work of men, cleave also to theirs. 
Let me also observe, further, that he who may under- 
take in any matter to correct them does not in this pre- 
sumptuously affirm himself a better scholar than they were. 
He for the most part only draws on the accumulated stores 



S INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 

of tlie knowledge of Greek which have been laboriously got 
together in the two hundred and fifty years that have 
elapsed since their work was done ; he only claims to be an 
inheritor in some sort of the cares specially devoted to the 
elucidation of the meaning of Holy Scripture during this 
period. It would be little to the honour of these ages if 
they had made no advances herein ; little to our honour, 
if we did not profit by their acquisitions. This much 
premised, I shall proceed to consider our Authorized 
Version of the New Testament under certain successive 
aspects, devoting a chapter to each. 



CHAPTER 11. 

ON THE ENGLISH OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION. 

nPHE first point which I propose to consider is the 
-■- English in which our Translation is composed. This 
has been very often, and very justly, the subject of highest 
commendation ; and if I do not reiterate in words of my 
own or of others these commendations, it is only because 
they have been uttered so often and so fully, that it has 
become a sort of commonplace to repeat them ; one fears 
to encounter the rebuke which befel the rhetorician of 
old, who, having made a long and elaborate oration in 
praise of the strength of Hercules, was asked. Who has 
denied it? at the close. Omitting then to praise in general 
terms what all must praise, it may yet be worth while to 
consider a very little in what those high merits, which by 
the confession of all it possesses, mainly consist ; nor shall 
I shrink from pointing out what appear to me its occa- 
sional weaknesses and blemishes, the spots upon the sun's 
face, which impair its perfect beauty. When we seek to 
measure the value of any style, there are two points which 
claim to be considered ; first the words themselves ; and 
then, secondly, the words in their relations to one another, 
and as modified by those relations ; in brief, the dictionary 
and the grammar. Now I should not hesitate in express- 
ing my conviction that the dictionary of our English Version 
is superior to the grammar. The first seems to me nearly 
as perfect as possible, the other not altogether faultless. 



10 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

In respect of words we recognize that true delectus vev- 
horum on which Cicero^ insists so earnestly, and in which 
so much of the charm of style consists. All the words used 
are of the noblest stamp, alike removed from vulgarity and 
pedantry ; they are neither too familiar, nor on the other 
side not familiar enough ; they never crawl on the ground, 
as little are they stilted and far-fetched. And then how 
happily mixed and tempered are the Anglo-Saxon and 
Latin vocables. No undue preponderance of the latter 
makes the language remote from the understanding of 
simple and unlearned men. Thus we do not find in our 
Version as in the Rheims, whose authors seem to have put 
off their loyalty to the English language with their loyalty 
to the English crown, * odible' (Rom. i. 30), nor *impu- 
dicity' (Gal. v. 19), nor 'longanimity (2 Tim. iii. 10), nor 
' co-inquinations' (1 Pet. ii. 1^, 20), nor ' comessations' 
(Gal. V. 21), nor ' contristate' (Ephes.iv. 30), nor ' zealatours' 
(Acts xxi. 20), nor * agnition' (Philem. 6) , nor ' suasible' 
(Jam. iii. 1 7), nor ' domesticals' ( i Tim. v. 8), nor * repro- 
pitiate' (Heb. ii. 17.)^ And yet, while it is thus, there is 
no extravagant attempt on the other side to put under ban 
words of Latin or Greek derivation, where there are not, 
as very often there could not be, sufficient equivalents for 



^ De Or at. 3, 37. 
2 Where the word itself which the Kheims translators employ is 
a perfectly good one, it is yet curious and instructive to observe how 
often they have drawn on the Latin portion of the language, where we 
have drawn on the Saxon; thus they use 'corporal' where we 
have 'bodily' (i Tim. iv. 8), ' incredulity' where we have 'unbelief 
(Heb. iii. 19, and often), ' precursor' where we have ' forerunner,' 
(Heb. vi. 20), ' dominator' where we have ' Lord ' (Jude 4), ' cogitation' 
where we have ' thought' (Luke ix. 46), ' fraternity' where we ' brother- 
hood' (i Pet. ii. 17). 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 11 

them in tlie homelier portion of our language ; no affecta- 
tion of excluding these, which in their measure and degree 
have as good a right to admission, as the most Saxon 
vocable of them all; no attempt, like that of Sir John 
Cheke, who in his version of St. Matthew, — in many respects 
a valuable monument of English, — substituted 'hundreder' 
for ' centurion,' ' freshman' for ' proselyte,' ' gainbirth' i.e, 
againbirth, for * regeneration,' with much else of the same 
kind. The fault, it must be owned, was in the right extreme, 
but was a fault and affectation no less. 

One of the most effectual means by which our Translators 
have attained their happy felicity in diction, while it must 
diminish to a certain extent their claims to absolute origi- 
nality, enhances in a far higher degree their good sense, 
moderation, and wisdom. I allude to the extent to which 
they have availed themselves of the work of those who 
went before them, and incorporated this work into their 
own, everywhere building, if possible, on the old founda- 
tions, and displacing nothing for the mere sake of change. 
It has thus come to pass that our Version, besides having 
its own felicities, is the inheritor of the felicities in language 
of all the translations which went before. Tyndale's was 
singularly rich in these, which is the more remarkable, as 
his other writings do not surpass in beauty or charm of 
language the average merit of his cotemporaries ; and 
though much of his work has been removed in the succes- 
sive revisions which our Bible has undergone, very much of 
it still remains: the alterations are for the most part 
verbal, while the forms and moulds into which he cast the 
sentences have been to a wonderful extent retained by all 
who succeeded him. And even of his \iE,ig very much sur- 
vives. To him we owe such phrases as " turned to flight 



1^ ON THE ENGLISH OP OUR VERSION. 

the armies of the aliens/'^ " the author and finisher of our 
faith ;'' to him, generally, we owe more than to any single 
labourer in this field — as, indeed, may be explained partly, 
though not wholly, from the fact that he was the first to 
thrust in his sickle into this harvest. Still, while King 
James's Translators were thus indebted to those who went 
before them in the same sacred office, to Tyndale above all, 
for innumerable turns of successful translation, which 
they have not failed to adopt and to make their own, it 
must not be supposed that very many of these were not of 
their own introduction. A multitude of phrases which, even 
more than the rest of Scripture, have become, on account 
of their beauty and fitness, " household words '' and fixed 
utterances of the religious life of the English people, we 
owe to them, and they first appear in the Version of 1 6 1 1 ; 
such, for instance, as " the Captain of our salvation " 
(Heb. ii. lo), " the sin which doth so easily beset us '' 
(Heb. xii. i), "the Prince of life'' (Acts iii. 15). 

But in passing, as I now propose to do, from generals 
to particulars, it is needful to make one preliminary obser- 
vation. He who passes judgment on the English of our 
Version, he, above all, who finds fault with it, should be 
fairly acquainted with the English of that age in which 
this Version appeared. Else he may be very unjust to that 
which he is judging, and charge it with inexactness of 
rendering, where indeed it was perfectly exact according to 
the English of the time, and has only ceased to be so now 
through subsequent changes or modifications in the mean- 
ing of words. Few, I am persuaded, who have studied our 
Translation, and tried how far it will bear a strict compa- 



* It may be said that this is obvious ; yet not so. The Rheims does 
not get nearer to it than " turned away the camp of foreigners." 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 13 

rison with the original which it undertakes to represent, 
but have at times been tempted to make hasty judgments 
here, and to pass sentences of condemnation which they 
liave afterwards, on better knowledge, seen reason to recall. 
Certainly, in many places where I once thought our Trans- 
lators had been wanting in precision of rendering, I now 
perceive that, according to the English of their own day, 
their Version is exempt from the faintest shadow of blame. 
It is quite true that their rendering has become in a 
certain measure inexact for us, but this from circumstances 
quite beyond their control, — namely, through those muta- 
tions of language which never cease, and which cause 
words innumerable to drift imperceptibly away from those 
meanings which once they owned. In many cases, no 
doubt, our Authorized Version, by its recognized authority, 
by an influence working silently, but not the less pro- 
foundly felt, has given fixity to the meaning of words, 
which otherwise they would not have possessed, has kept 
them in their places ; but the currents at work in language 
have been sometimes so strong as to overbear even this 
influence. The most notable examples of the kind which 
occur to me are the following : — 

Matt. vi. 25. — " Take no thought for your life, what ye 
shall eat, or what ye shall drink."" This " take no thought''' 
is certainly an inadequate translation in our present 
English of /x?) fxepLjuvaTe. The words seem to exclude 
and to condemn that just forward-looking care which be- 
longs to man, and differences him from the beasts which 
live only in the present ; and " most English critics have 
lamented the inadvertence of our Authorized Version, which, 
in bidding us ' take no thought' for the necessaries of life, 
prescribes to us what is impracticable in itself, and would 



14 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

be a breach of Christian duty even were it possible."^ But 
there is no ' inadvertence' here. When our Translation was 
made, " take no thought'' was a perfectly correct rendering 
of juri juEpiiuvaTe. ' Thought' was then constantly used as 
equivalent to anxiety or solicitous care ; as let witness this 
passage from Bacon :^ " Harris, an alderman in London, was 
put in trouble, and died with thought and anxiety before 
his business came to an end ;" or still better, this from one 
of the Somers Tracts (its date is of the reign of Elizabeth): 
" In five hundred years only two queens have died in child- 
birth. Queen Catherine Parr died rather of thought.'^ ^ A 
better example even than either of these is that occurring 
in Shakespeare's Julius Ccesai^ (" take thought and die for 
Caesar"), where " to take thought" is to take a matter so 
seriously to heart that death ensues. 

Luke xiii. 7. — " Why cumhereth it the ground ?" ' Cum- 
bereth' seems here too weak and too negative a rendering 
of KarapyeLy which is a word implying active positive mis- 
chief; and so no doubt it is in the present acceptation of 
" to cumber ;" which means no more than " to burden." But 
it was not so always. " To cumber" meant once to vex, 
annoy, injure, trouble ; Spenser speaks of " cumbrous gnats." 
It follows that when Bishop Andrews quotes the present 
passage,^ " Why trouhleth it the ground ?" (I do not know 
from whence he derived this ' troubleth,^ which is not in any 
of our translations), and when Coverdale renders it, "Why 
hindereth it the ground ?" they seem, but are not really, 
more accurate than our own Translators were. The em- 
ployment by these last of ' cumber,' at Luke x. 40, (the 



1 ScEiVENEE, Notes on the New Testament, vol. i, p. 162; and cf. 
Alford, in loco. 

? Sistory of Senry the Seventh. ^ Vol. i, p. 172. 

'^ Act 2, sc. I. " Worlcs, vol. 2, p. 40. 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 15 

only other place in the Authorized Version where the word 
occurs) is itself decisive of the sense they ascribed to it. 
UEpiaGTrcLTo (literally "was distracted") is there rendered 
by them, "was cumbered/'^ 

Acts xvii. !2,^. — * Devotions.' This was a perfectly correct 
rendering of Gz^acTiiara at the time our Translation was 
made, although as much can scarcely be affirmed of it now. 
* Devotions' is now abstract, and means the mental offerings 
of the devout worshipper ; it was once concrete, and meant 
the outward objects to which these were rendered, as tem- 
ples, altars, images, shrines, and the like ; ' Heiligthiimer' 
De Wette has very happily rendered it ; cf % Thess. ii. 4, 
the only other passage in the New Testament where the 
word occurs, and where we have rendered iravra XeyofjiEvov 
Qeov rj (ji^a(Tfia, " all that is called God or that is worship- 
ped." It is such, — not the ' devotions' of the Athenians 
worshipping, but the objects which the Athenians devoutly 
worshipped, — which St. Paul affirms that he ' beheld,' or, as 
it would be better, "accurately considered" (avaOewpoJv) : 
yet the following passage in Sidney's Arcadia will bear 
out our Translators, and justify their use of ' devotions,' as 
accurate in their time, though no longer accurate in ours : 
" Dametas began to look big, to march up and down, swear- 



^ I have no doubt that most readers of that magnificent passage in 
Julius Ccesar, where Antony prophesies over the dead body of Caesar 
the ills of which that murder shall be the cause, give to ' cumber' a 
wrong sense in the following lines : — 

" Domestic fury and fierce civil strife 
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy." 

They understand, shall load with corpses of the slain, or, as we say, 
* encumber' — so at least I understood it long. A good, even a grand 
sense, but it is not Shakespeare's. He means, shall trouble or 
mischief. 



J 6 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

ing by no mean devotions that the walls should not keep 
the coward from him/' 

Acts xix. 37. — " Ye have brought hither these men, who 
are neither robbers of churches, nor blasphemers of your 
goddess." I long counted this " robbers of churches," as a 
rendering of kpodvXovg, if not positively incorrect, yet a 
slovenly and indefensible transfer of Christian language to 
heathen objects. But it is not so. ' Church' is in constant 
use in early English for heathen and Jewish temples as 
well as for Christian places of worship. I might quote a 
large aiTay of proofs, but two will suffice. In the first, 
which is from Holland's Pliny, ^ the term is applied to a 
heathen temple : " This is that Latona which you see in the 
Church of Concordia in Rome ;' while in the second, from 
Sir John Choke's translation of St. Matthew, it is a name 
given to the temple at Jerusalem : " And lo the veil of the 
Church was torn into two parts from the top do w.n wards" 
(Matt, xxvii. 51). 

Acts xxi. 15. — "After three days we took up our car^nages 
and went up to Jerusalem." A critic of the early part of 
this century makes himself merry with these words, and 
their inaccurate rendering of the original : " It is not pro- 
bable that the Cilician tent-maker was either so rich or so 
lazy." And a more modern objector to the truthfulness of 
the Acts asks. How could they have taken up their car- 
riages, when there is no road for wheels, nothing but a 
mountain track, between Csesarea and Jerusalem ? But 
' carriage' is a constant word in the English of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth century^ for baggage, being that which 
men carry, and not, as now, that which carries them. 
Nor can there be any doubt that it is employed by 



^ Vol. 2, p. 502. 2 gee North's Flutarch, passim. 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUE VERSION. 17 

our Translators here^ as also in one or two other passages 
where it occurs, in this sense (Judg. xviii. 21 ; i Sam. xvii. 
22); and while so understood, the words " took up our car- 
riages" are a very sufficient rendering of the kiriGKevaad/uLivoL 
of the original. The Geneva has it correctly, though some- 
what quaintly, " trussed up our fardels.'' 

Ephes. iv. 3.—" Endeavouring to keep the unity of the 
Spirit in the bond of peace.'' Passages like this, in which 
the verb ' endeavour' occurs, will sometimes seem to have 
been carelessly and loosely translated ; when, indeed, they 
were rendered with perfect accuracy according to the 
English of that day. " Endeavour," it has been well said, 
" once denoted all possible tension, the highest energy 
that could be directed to an object. With us it means 
the last feeble hopeless attempt of a person who knows 
-that he cannot accomplish his aim, but makes a conscience 
of going through some formalities for the purpose of 
showing that the failure is not his fault." ^ More than one 
passage suffers from this change in the force of ' endeavour;' 
as 2 Pet. i. 15, and this from the Ephesians still more. If 
we attach to ' endeavour' its present meaning, we may too 
easily persuade ourselves that the Apostle does no more 
than bid us to attempt to preserve this unity, and that he 
quite recognizes the possibility of our being defeated in 
the attempt. He does no such thing ; he assumes success. 
^irovdaZovTtg means "giving all diligence," and 'endea- 
vouring' meant no less two centuries and a half ago. 

I Tim. V. 4. — " If any widow have children or nephews." 
But why, it has been asked, are kyova, or descendants, 
translated * nephews' here ? and why should ' nephews' be 
specially charged with this duty of supporting their relatives? 



^ Lincoln's Inn Sermons, by F. D. Maurice, p. 156. 
C 



18 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

The answer is that 'nephews', (= 'nepotes') was the constant 
word for grandchildren and other lineal descendants, 
as witness the following passages ; this from Hooker : 
" With what intent they [the apocryphal books] were 
first published, those words of the nephew of Jesus do 
plainly signify : ' After that my grandfather Jesus had 
given himself to the reading of the Law and of the Prophets, 
he purposed also to write something pertaining to learning 
and wisdom ;' "" ^ and this from Holland : " The warts, black 
moles, spots, and freckles of fathers, not appearing at all 
upon their own children's skin, begin afterwards to put 
forth and show themselves in their nephews, to wit, the 
children of their sons and daughters/' ^ There is no doubt 
that ' nephews' is so used here, as also at Judg. xii. 14. 
Words which, like this, have imperceptibly shifted their 
meaning, are peculiarly liable to mislead ; though by no 
fault of the Translators. This one has misled a scholar so 
accurate as the late Professor Blunt ; who, in his Church of 
the First Three Centuries, p. 27, has urged the circum- 
stance that in the apostolic times the duties of piety 
extended so far, that not children only, but even nephews, 
were expected to support their aged relations. Words of this 
character differ from words which have become wholly 
obsolete. These are like rocks which stand out from the 
sea ; we are warn-ed of their presence, and there is little 
danger of our making shipwreck upon them. But words 
like those which have been just cited, as familiar now as 
when our Yersion was made, but employed in quite dif- 
ferent meanings from those which they then possessed, are 
like hidden rocks, which give no notice of their presence, 
and on which we may be shipwrecked, if I may so say, 

^ Ecclesiastical Polity, b. 5, c. 20. 
2 Plutarch's Morals, p. 555. 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 19 

without so much as being aware of it. It would be mani- 
festly desirable that these unnoticed obstacles to our seizing 
the exact sense of Scripture, obstacles which no carelessness 
of our Translators, but which Time in its onward course, 
has placed in our way, should, in case of any revision, be 
removed. " Res fugiunt, vocabula manent" — this is the law 
of things in their relation to words, and it renders necessary 
at certain intervals a readjustment of the two. 

In thus changing that which by the silent changes of time 
has become liable to mislead, we should only be working 
in the spirit, and according to the evident intention, which 
in their time guided the Translators of 1611. They evi- 
dently contemplated as part of their task the removing 
from their revision of such words as in the lapse of years 
had become to their cotemporaries unintelligible or mis- 
leading. For instance, 'to depart" no longer meant to 
separate ; and just as at a later day, in 1661, "till death us 
depart'' was changed in the Marriage Service for that 
which now stands there, " till death us do part," so in their 
revision 'separate' was substituted for 'depart' ("depart 
us from the love of God'") at Rom. viii. 39. 

At Matt, xxiii. 25, we have another example of the same. 
The words stood there up to the time of the Geneva version, 
" Ye make clean the outer side of the cup and of the 
platter ; but within they are full of bribery and excess.'"' 
* Bribery,' however, about their time was losing, or had lost, 
its meaning of rapine or extortion, was, therefore, no 
longer a fit rendering of apirayri ; the ' bribour' or ' briber' 
was not equivalent to the robber: they, therefore, did 
wisely and well in exchanging 'bribery' for 'extortion' 
here. They dealt in the same spirit with 'noisome' at 
1 Tim. vi. 9. In the earlier versions of the English Church, 
and up to their revision, it stood, " They that will be rich 

c2 



20 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

fall into temptation and snares, and into many foolish and 
noisome (p\a(5Epag) lusts/' ' Noisome/ that is, when those 
translations were made, was simply equivalent to noxious or 
hurtful -^ but in the beginning of the seventeenth century 
it was acquiring a new meaning, the same which it now 
retains, — namely, that of exciting disgust rather than 
that of doing actual hurt or harm. Thus a tiger 
would have been ^ noisome ' in old English, a skunk or a 
polecat would be ^noisome' in modern. Here was reason 
enough for the change which they made. 

Indeed, our only complaint against them in this matter 
is, that they did not carry out this side of their revision con- 
sistently and to the full. For instance, in respect of this 
very word, they have suffered it to remain in some other 
passages, from which, also, it should have disappeared. 
Three or four of these occur in the Old Testament, as 
Job xxxi. 40 ; Ps. xci. 3 ; Ezek. xiv. 2 J ; only one in the 
new, Rev. xvi. 2 ; where kukov cXkoc is certainly not " a 
noisome sore '' in our sense of ' noisome,' that is, offensive 
or disgusting, but an ' evil,' or, as the Rheims has it, " a 
cruel sore/' It is the same with ' by and bye/ This, when 
they wrote, was ceasing to mean immediately. The invete- 
rate procrastination of men had caused it to designate a 
remoter term ; even as ' presently ' does not any longer 
mean, at this present, but, in a little while ; and " to intend 
anything " is not now, to do it, but to mean to do it. They 
did well, therefore, that in many cases, as at Mark ii. 12, 
they did not leave * by and bye ' as a rendering of evOiwg 
and tvOvg ; but they would have done still better, if they 



^ " He [the superstitious person] is persuaded that they be gods 
indeed, but such as be noisome, hurtful, and doing mischief unto men." 
^Holland, Plutarch's Morals, p. 260. 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 21 

had removed it in every case. In four places (Matt. xiii. 
31 ; Mark vi. 25 ; Luke xvii. 7 ; xxi. 9) they have suffered 
it to remain. 

Again, * to grudge ' was ceasing in their time to have the 
sense of, to murmur openly, and was already signifying to 
repine inwardly ; a ' grudge ' was no longer an open utter ^ 
ance of discontent and displeasure at the dealings of 
another,^ but a secret resentment thereupon entertained. 
It was only proper, therefore, that they should replace ' to 
grudge' by ' to murmur,' and a ' grudge ' by a ' murmuring,' 
in such passages as Mark xiv. 5 ; Acts vi. i. On two occa- 
sions, however, they have suffered 'grudge' to stand, where 
it no longer conveys to us with accuracy the meaning of the 
original, and e^en in their time must have failed to do so. 
These are i Pet. iv. 9, where they render avev yoyyvajLiwv 
" without grudging ;" and Jam. v. 9, where ^17 (rreva^^ere is 
rendered " Grudge not." These renderings were inherited 
from their predecessors, but the retention of them was an 
oversight. 

On another occasion, our Translators have failed to carry 
out to the full the substitution of a more appropriate phrase 
for one which, indeed, in the present instance, could have 
been at no time worthy of praise, or other than more or 
less misleading ; I allude to Acts xii. 4 : " Intending after 
faster to bring him fo]?th to the people." They plainly 
felt that ' Easter,' which had designated first a heathen, 
and then a Christian festival, was not happily used to set 
forth a Jewish feast, even though that might occupy the 
same place in the Jewish calendar which Easter occupied 



* " Yea, without gimdging Christ suffered the cruel Jews to crown 
Him with most sharp thorns, and to strike him with a reed." — Exa- 
mination of William Thorpe, in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. 



QO 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 



in the Christian ; and they therefore removed ' Easter ' 
from places out of number, where in the earlier version it 
had stood as the rendering of Udcrxa, substituting 'passover' 
in its room. With all this they have suffered ' Easter ' to 
remain in this single passage, sometimes, I am sure, to the 
perplexity, of the English reader. ' Jewry' in like manner, 
which has been replaced by ' Judsea' almost everywhere, has 
yet been allowed, I must needs believe by the same over- 
sight, twice to remain (Luke xxiii. 5 ; John vii. i.) 

In dealing with obsolete words, the case is not by any 
means so plain. And yet it does not seem difficult to lay 
down a rule here ; the difficulties would mainly attend its 
application. The rule would seem to me to be this, — 
Where words have become perfectly unintelligible to the 
great body of those for whom the translation is made, the 
l^tojTai of the Church, they ought clearly to be exchanged 
for others ; for the Bible works not as a charm, but as 
reaching the heart and conscience through the intelligent 
faculties of its hearers and readers. Thus is it with ' taches/ 
^ouches,' ' boiled," * ear' (arare), 'daysman/ in the Old Testa- 
ment, words dark even to scholars, where their scholarship 
is rather in Latin and Greek than in early English. Of 
these, however, there is hardly one in the New Testament. 
There is, indeed, in it no inconsiderable amount of archaism, 
but standing on a quite different footing ; words which, 
while they are felt by our people to be old and unusual, 
are yet, if I do not deceive myself, perfectly understood by 
them, by wise and simple, educated and uneducated alike. 
These, shedding round the sacred volume the reverence of 
age, removing it from the ignoble associations which will 
often cleave to the language of the day, should on no 
account be touched, but rather thankfully accepted and 
carefully preserved. For, indeed, it is good that the 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. ' 23 

phraseology of Scripture should not be exactly that of our 
common life ; should be removed from the vulgarities, and 
even the famiharities, of this ; just as there is a sense of 
fitness which dictates that the architecture of a church 
should be different from that of a house. 

It might seem superfluous to urge this ; yet it is far from 
being so. It is well-nigh incredible what words it has 
been sometimes proposed to dismiss from our Version, on 
the ground that they " are now almost or entirely obsolete.'' 
Symonds thinks "clean escaped'' (2 Pet. ii. 18) "a very 
low expression ;" and, on the plea of obsoleteness. Wemyss 
proposed to get rid of 'straightway,' 'haply,' 'twain,' 'athirst,' 
'wax,' 'lack,' ' ensample,' 'jeopardy,' 'garner,' 'passion,' 
with a multitude of other words not a whit more apart 
from our ordinary use. Purver, whose New and Literal 
Translation of the Old and New Testament appeared in 
1764, has an enormous list of expressions that are " clownish, 
barbarous, base, hard, technical, misapplied, or new coined/' 
and among these are 'beguile,' 'boisterous,' 'lineage,' 
'perseverance,' 'potentate,' 'remit,' 'seducers,' 'shorn,' 
'swerved,' 'vigilant,' 'unloose,' 'unction,' 'vocation;' for 
each of these (many hundreds in number) he proposes to 
substitute some other. 

This retaining of the old diction in all places where a 
higher interest, that, namely, of being understood by all, 
did not imperatively require the substitution of another 
phrase, would be most needful, not merely for the reverence 
which attaches to it, and for the avoiding every unnecessary 
disturbance in the minds of the people, but for the shunning 
of another and not a trivial harm. Were the substitution 
of new for old carried out to any large extent, this most 
injurious consequence would follow, that our Translation 
would be no longer of a piece, not any more one web 



24 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

and woof, but in part English of the seventeenth century, 
in part English of the nineteenth. Now, granting that 
nineteenth century English is as good as seventeenth, of 
which there may be very serious doubts, still they are not 
the same ; the differences between them are considerable ; 
some of these we can explain, others we must be content 
only to feel. But even those who could not explain any part 
of them would yet be conscious of them, would be pained 
by a sense of incongruity, of new patches on an old garment, 
and the one failing to agree with the other. Now all will 
admit that it is of vast importance that the Bible of the 
nation should be a book capable of being read with delight^- 
I mean quite apart from its higher claim as God's Word to 
be read with devoutest reverence and honour. It can be 
so read now. But the sense of pleasure in it, I mean merely 
as the first English classic, would be greatly impaired by 
any alterations which seriously affected the homogeneous- 
ness of its style. And this, it must be remembered, is a 
danger altogether new, one which did not at all beset the 
former revisions. From Tyndale's first edition of his New 
Testament in 1526 to the Authorized Version there elapsed 
in all but eighty-five years, and this period was divided 
into four or five briefer portions by Cranmer's, Coverdale's, 
the Geneva, the Bishops' Bible, which were published in 
the interval between one date and the other. But from the 
date of King James's Translation (1611) to the present day 
nearly two hundred and fifty years have elapsed ; and more 
than this time^ it is to be hoped, will have elapsed before 
any steps are actually taken in this matter. When we 
argue for the facilities of revision now from the facilities of 
revision on previous occasions, we must not forget that the 
long period of time which has elapsed since our last revision, 
so very much longer than lay between any of the preceding, 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUK VERSION. 25 

has in many ways immensely complicated the problem, has 
made many precautions necessary now which would have 
been superfluous then.^ 

Certainly, too, when we read what manner of stuff is 
offered to us in exchange for the language of our Authorized 
Version, we learn to prize it more highly than ever. Indeed, 
we hardly know the immeasurable worth of its religious 
diction till we set this side by side with what oftentimes is 
proffered in its room. Thus, not to speak of some sug- 
gested changes which would be positively offensive, we 
should scarcely be gainers in perspicuity or accuracy, if for 
James i. 8, which now stands, " A double-minded man is 
unstable in all his ways,'^ we were to read, "A man 
unsteady in his opinions is unconstant in all his actions " 
(Wemyss). Neither would the gain be very evident, if, " I 
have a baptism to be baptized with " (Luke xii. 50) gave 
place to, " I have an immersion to undergo/' " Wrath to 



^ It is an eminent merit in the Revision of the Authorized Version 
hy Five Clergymen, of which the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle to 
the Eomans have already appeared, that they have not merely urged 
by precept, but shown by proof, that it is possible to revise our Version, 
and at the same time to preserve unimpaired the character of the 
English in which it is composed. Nor is it only on tliis account that 
we may accept this work as by far the most hopeful contribution which 
we have yet had to the solution of a great and difficult problem ; but 
also as showing that where reverent hands touch that building, which 
some would have wholly pulled down that it might be wholly built up 
again, these find only the need of here and there replacing a stone 
which had been incautiously built into the wall, or which, trustworthy 
material once, has now yielded to the lapse and injury of time, while they 
leave the building itself in its main features and framework untouched. 
Differing as the Revisers occasionally do even among themselves, they 
will not wonder that others sometimes differ from the conclusions at 
which they have arrived ; but there can, I think, be no difference upon 
this point, namely, that their work deserves the most grateful recogni- 
tion of the Church. 



26 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

come" we may well be contented to retain, though we are 
offered " impending vengeance '' in its place. " In cham- 
bering and wantonness '' would not be improved, even 
though we were to substitute for it " in unchaste and im- 
modest gratifications." Dr. Campbeirs work " On the Four 
Gospels " contains dissertations which have their value ; 
yet the advantage would not be great of superseding 
Mark vi. 19, 20, as it now stands, by the following : " This 
roused Herodias' resentment^ who would have killed John ; 
but could not, because Herod respected him, and, knowing 
him to be a just and holy man, protected him, and did 
many things recommended by him, and heard him with 
pleasure." I have only seen quoted in a newspaper, and, 
therefore, it may possibly be a jest, that in the American 
Bible Union's Improved Version such improvements as the 
following occur, " That in the name of Jesus, every knee 
should bend of heavenlies, and of earthlies, and of infemals" 
(PhiL ii.>|i^ ; " Ye have put on the young man" (Col. iii. ] o). 
Of Harwood's Liberal Translation of the New Testament 
(London, 1768) and the follies of it, not far from blas- 
phemous, it is unnecessary to give any example. 

When we consider not the words of our Version one by 
one, but the words in combination, as they are linked to 
one another, and by their position influence and modify 
one another ; in short, the accidence and the syntax, this, 
being good, is yet not so good as the selection of the words 
themselves. There are, undoubtedly, inaccuracies and neg- 
ligences here. Bishop Lowth long ago pointed out several 
faults in the grammatical construction of sentences '} and 
although it must be confessed that now and then he is 
hypercritical, and that his objections will not stand, yet 



^ In his Short Introduction to English Grammar. 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 27 

others which he has not pressed would be found to supply 
the place of those which must therefore be withdrawn. 

But here, too, and before entering on this matter, there 
is room for the same observation which was made in respect 
of the words of our Translation. Many charges have here 
also been lightly, some ignorantly, made. Our Translators 
now and then appear ungrammatical, because they give us, 
as they needs must, the grammar of their own day, and 
not the grammar of ours. It is curious to find Bishop 
Newcome^ taking them to task for using 'his' or 'her,"* 
where they ought to have used ' its / as in such passages 
as the following : " But if the salt have lost his savour, 
wherewith shall it be salted V (Matt. v. 13.) " Charity 
doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own.'' 
(1 Cor. xiii. 5 ; cf. Rev. xxii. 2.) " This sometimes,'' he 
says, "introduces strange confusion." But this confusion, 
as he calls it, when they wrote was inevitable, or at least 
could only be avoided by circumlocutions, as by the use of 
' thereof.' Nor, moreover, did this usage present itself as 
any confusion of masculine and neuter, or of personal and 
impersonal, at the time when our Translators wrote ; for 
then that very serviceable, but often very inharmonious, 
little word, ' its,' as a genitive of ' it,' had not appeared, or 
had only just appeared, timidly and rarely, in the language,^ 
and ' his' was quite as much a neuter as a masculine. 



^ Sistorical View of the English Biblical Translations. Dublin, 
1792, p. 289. 

2 I have elsewhere entered on this matter somewhat more fully 
{English Fast and Fresent, 3rd ed. p. 124 sqq^^, and have there observed 
that ' its' nowhere occurs in our Authorized Yersion. Lev. xxv. 5 (" of 
its own accord") has been since urged as invalidating my assertion j 
but does not so really; for reference to the first, or indeed to any of the 
early editions, will show that in them the passage stood " of it own 
accord." Nor is ' it ' here a misprint for * itsj' for we have exactly the 



28 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

Others have in other points found fault with the grammar 
of our Version, where, in Hke manner, they " have con- 
demned the guiltless,'' their objections frequently serving 
only to reveal their own un acquaintance with the history 
and past evolution of their native tongue — an unacquaint- 
ance excusable enough in others, yet hardly in those who 
set themselves up as critics and judges in so serious and 
solemn a matter as is here brought into judgment. This 
ignorance is indeed sometimes surprising. Thus Wemyss^ 
complains of a false concord at Rev. xviii. 17:" For in one 
hour so great riches is come to nought.'' He did not know 
that ' riches' is properly no plural at all, and the final ' s' in 
it no sign of a plural, but belonging to the word, in its 
French form, ^richesse,' and that 'riches' has only become 
a plural, as ' alms' and ' eaves' are becoming such, through 
our forgetfulness of this fact. When Wielif wants a plural, 
he adds another 's,'^ and writes 'richessis' (Rom. ii. 4; 
Jam. V. 2). It is true that at the time when our Version 
was made, * riches' was already commonly regarded and 
dealt with as a plural ; it is there generally so used, and 
therefore it would have been better if, for consistency's 
sake, they had so used it here ; but there is no grammatical 
error in the case, any more than when Shakespeare writes, 
" The riches of the ship is come to shore." The same 
objector finds fault with "asked an alms" (Acts iii. 3), and 
suggests, " asked some alms," in its room, evidently on the 
same assumption that ' alms' is a plural. Neither can he 

same " by it own accord" in the Geneva Yersion, Acts xii. 10 j and in 
other English books of the beginning of the seventeenth century, which 
never employ 'its.' There is a fuller treatment of this word and the 
first appearance of it, in Mr. Craik's very valuable work, On the English 
of ShaTces;peare, p. 91, and I should desire what I have written on the 
matter to be read with the corrections which he supplies. 
^ Biblical Gleanings, ^. 212. 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. ^9 

tolerate our rendering of i Tim. v. 23 : " Use a little wine 
for tliine often infirmities ;" but complains of ' often/ an 
adverb, here used as though it were an adjective ; while, 
indeed, the adjectival use of 'oft,' * often,' surviving still in 
"o/i^times," " oftenimiQ^," is the primary, the adverbial 
merely secondary. 

But all frivolous, ungrounded objections set aside, there 
will still remain a certain number of passages where the 
grammatical construction is capable of improvement. In 
general the very smallest alteration will set everything 
right. These are some : — 

Heb. v. 8. — " Though He luere a Son, yet learned He 
obedience by the things which He suffered.'' If the Apostle 
*had been putting a possible hypothetical case, this would 
be correct ; for example, " Though He slay me, yet will 
I trust in Him" (Job xiii. 35), is without fault. But here, 
on the contrary, he is assuming a certain conceded fact, 
that Christ luas a Son, and that being such, and though He 
was such, yet in this way of suffering He learned obedience. 
* Though' is here a concessive conditional particle, the Latin 
'* etsi' or ' etiamsi' as followed by an indicative, and should 
-have itself been followed by such in our Version. It ought 
to be, " Though He tuas a Son, &c." 

John ix. 31. — " If any man be a worshipper of God, and 
doeth his will, him He heareth." As in the passage just 
noted, we have a subjunctive instead of an indicative, an 
actual objective fact dealt with as though it were only a 
possible subjective conception, so here we have just the 
converse, an indicative instead of a subjunctive. It is 
true that in modern English the subjunctive is so rapidly 
disappearing, that " If any man doeth his will" might very 
well pass. Still it was an error when our Translators wrote ; 
and there is, at any rate, an inconcinnity in allowing the 



30 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

indicative ' doeth/ in the second clause of the sentence, to 
follow the subjunctive ' be' in the first, both equally depend- 
ing upon 4f ;' one would gladly, therefore, see a return to 
" do his will,'' which stood in Tj^ndale's version. 

Matt. xvi. i^. — ' ' Whom say ye that I am V The English 
is faulty here. It ought plainly to be, " Who say ye that 
I am :" as is evident if only ' who' be put last : " Ye say 
that I am who ?" The Latin idiom, "Quern me esse dicitis ?" 
probably led our Translators, and all who went before them, 
astray. Yet the cases are not in the least parallel. If the 
English idiom had allowed the question to assume this 
shape, " Whom say ye me to be ?" then the Latin form 
would have been a true parallel, and also a safe guide ; the 
accusative ^ whom' not, indeed, as governed by ^say,' but 
as corresponding to the accusative ^ me,' being then the only 
correct case, as the nominative ' who,' to answer to the 
nominative * I,' is the only correct one in the passage as it 
now stands. The mistake repeats itself on several occa- 
sions; thus at Matt. xvi. 13 ; Mark viii. 37, 29 ; Luke ix. 
18, 20 ; Acts xiii. 25. 

Heb. ix. 5. — "And over it the Cheruhims of glory." 
But * Cherubim' being already plural, it is excess of expres- 
sion to add another, an English plural, to the Hebrew, 
which our Translators on this one occasion of the word's 
occurrence in the New Testament, and constantly in the 
Old, have done. " CherubiTis of glory," as it is in the 
Geneva and Rheims versions, is intelligible and quite 
unobjectionable. The Hebrew singular is then dealt with 
as a naturalized English word, forming an English plural ; 
just as there would be nothing to object to 'automatons' or 
^ terminuses,' which ultimately, no doubt, will be the plurals 
of * automaton ' and * terminus ;' but there would be much 
to ' automatas' or ' terminis,' or to ' erratas,' though, strangely 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 31 

enough, we find this in Jerem}^ Taylor, as we do ' synonymas' 
in Mede. It might be free to use either ' geniuses' or 
'genii' as the plural of 'genius' (we do, in fact, employ 
both, though in different senses), but not geniis ; and it is 
exactly this sort of error into which our Translators have 
here fallen. 

Rev. xxi. 1%. — "And had a wall great and high." The 
verb ' had ' is here without a nominative. All that is neces- 
sary is to return to Wiclif s translation : " And it had a 
wall great and high." 

Again, we much regret the frequent use of adjectives 
ending in ' ly,' as though they were adverbs. This termina- 
tion, being that of so great a number of our adverbs, easily 
lends itself to the mistake, and at the same time often 
serves to conceal it. Thus our Translators at i Cor. xiii. 5 
say of charity, that it " doth not behave itself unseemly/' 
Now this, at first hearing, does not sound to many as an 
error, because the final ' ly' of the adjective ' unseemly' 
causes it to pass with them as though it were an adverb. 
But substitute another equivalent adjective ; say, " doth 
not behave itself improper/' or "doth not behave itself 
unbefitting," and the violation of the laws of grammar 
makes itself felt at once. Compare Tit. ii. 12: "soberly, 
righteously, and godly in this present world." It ought to 
be ' godlily' here, as ' unseemfily' in the other passage ; or if 
this repetition of the final ' ly' is unpleasing to the ear, as, 
indeed it is, then some other word should be sought. The 
error recurs in 2 Tim. iii. 12; Jude 15 ; and is not unfre- 
quent in the Prayer Book. Thus we find it in the thirty- 
sixth Article : " We decree all such to be rightly, orderly, 
and lawfully consecrated." ^ 

1 It is curious to note how frequent the errors are arising from the 
same cause. Thus I remember meeting in Foxe's Book of Martyrs (I 



32 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 

Should a revision of our Version ever be attempted, it 
seems to me that the same principle should rule in dealing 
with archaic forms as I have sought to lay down in respect 
of archaic words. Nothing but necessity should provoke 
alteration. Thus there can be no question that our old 
English praeterites, ' clave/ ' drave/ ' sware/ ' brake/ 'strake/ 
should stand. They are as good English now as they were 
two centuries and a half ago : they create no perplexity in 
the minds of any ; while at the same time they profitably 
difference the language of Scripture from the language of 
common and every-day life. But it is otherwise, as it 
seems to me, with archaisms which are in positive opposi- 
tion to the present usage of the English tongue. Thus, 
' his' and ' her' should be replaced by ' its,' at such passages 
as Matt. v. 13 ; Mark ix. 50 ; Luke xiv. 34 ; Kev. xxii. 2 ; 
I Cor. xiii. 5 ; which might be done almost without exciting 
the least observation ; so also ' which' by ' who,' wherever a 
person and not a thing is referred to. This, too, might be 
easily done, for our Translators have no certain law here ; 
for instance, in the last chapter of the Romans, * which' 
occurs seven times, referring to a person or persons, ' who' 
exactly as often. The only temptation to retain this use of 



have not the exact reference) the words, " if this be perj)end" Here it 
is clear that Foxe was for the moment deceived by the termination of 
' perpend/ so like the usual termination of the past participle ; and did 
not observe that he ought to have written, " if this be perpended." In 
our own day Tennyson treats ' eaves' as if the final ' s' were the sign of 
.the plural, which being dismissed, one might have ' eave' for a singular ; 
and he writes " the cottage eave." But ' eaves' (* efese' in the Anglo- 
Saxon) is itself the singular. With the same momentary inadvertence 
Lord Macaulay deals with the final ' s' in ' Cyclops' as though it were 
the plural sign, and speaks in one of the late volumes of his history of 
a 'Cyclop;' and pages might be filled with mistakes which have their 
origin in similar causes. 



ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VEESION. 33 

' which' would be to mark by its aid the distinction between 
ocTTig and oc, so hard to seize in English. At the same 
time a retention with this view would itself involve many- 
changes, seeing that our Translators did not turn 'which' 
to this special service, but for Sg and 6(7Tig employed 
*who' and 'which' quite promiscuously. But upon this 
part of my subject that which has been said must suffice. 



CHAPTER III. 

ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 

TTOW many questions at once present themselves, many 
-'—^ among them of an almost insuperable difficulty in their 
solution, so soon as it is attempted to transfer any great 
work from one language into another. Let it be only some 
high and original work of human genius, the Divina 
GomTYiedia, for instance, and how many problems, at first 
sight seeming insoluble, and which only genius can solve, 
even it being often content to do so imperfectly, to evade 
rather than to solve them, at once offer themselves to the 
translator.^ The loftier and deeper, the more original a 
poem or other composition may be, the more novel and 
unusual the sphere in which it moves, by so much the 
more these difficulties will multiply. They can therefore 
nowhere be so many and so great as in the rendering of 
that Book which is sole of its kind ; which reaches far 
higher heights and far deeper depths than any other; 
which has words of God and not of man for its substance ; 
while the importance of success or failure, with the far- 
reaching issues which will follow on the one or the other, 
sinks in each other case into absolute insignificance as 
compared with their importance here. 

Thus the missionary translator, if he be at all aware of 



^ Only to few translators, and to them only on rare occasions, is it 
given to deserve the magnificent praise which Jerome gives to Hilary, 
and to his translations from the Greek {£Jp. 33) : Quasi captivos sensus 
in saam linguam victoris jure transposuit. 



ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 35 

the awful implement which he is wielding, of the tre- 
mendous crisis in a people's spiritual life which has arrived, 
when their language is first made the vehicle of revealed 
truths, will often tremble at the work he has in hand; 
tremble lest he should be permanently lowering or confusing 
the whole religious life of a people, by choosing a meaner 
and letting go a nobler word for the setting forth of some 
leading truth of redemption. Even those who are wholly 
ignorant of Chinese can yet perceive how vast the spiritual 
interests which are at stake in China, how much will be 
won, or how much lost, for the whole spiritual life of that 
people, it may be for ages to come, according as the right 
or the wrong word is selected by the translators of the 
Scriptures into Chinese for expressing the true and the 
living God.^ As many of us as are ignorant of the language 
can be no judges in the controversy which on this matter is 
being carried on, but we can all feel how enormous the in- 
terests which are at stake. 

And even where the issues are not so vast and awful as 
in this case, how much may turn on having or not having 
the appropriate word. Very often there is none such ; and 
some common, some profane word has to be seized, and set 
apart, and sanctified, and gradually to be impregnated with 
a higher and holier meaning than any which, before its 
adoption into this sacred service, it knew. Sometimes, 
when the transfer is being made into a language which has 
already received a high development, the embarrassment 
will not be this, but the opposite to this. Two, or it may 
be more, words will present themselves — each inadequate, 
yet each with its own advantages, so that it shall be exceed- 
ingly difficult for the most skilful master of language to 



1 See the Eev. S. C. Malan's Who is God in China, Shin or Shang-te ? 

D 2 



36 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 

determine which ought to be preferred. Thus it was not 
indifferent whether Aoyoc should be rendered in ecclesiasti- 
cal Latin ^ Sermo' or ' Verbum.' The fact that ' Verbum' 
has from the beginning been the predominant rendering, 
and that ' Verbum" is a neuter impersonal, possessing no 
such mysterious duplicity of meaning as Aoyog, which is at 
once the ' Word' and the * Eeason," has, I do not hesitate to 
affirm, modified the whole development of Latin theology 
in respect of the personal " Word of God." I do not, indeed, 
believe that the advantages which in ' Yerbum' are lost, 
would have been secured by the choosing of ' Sermo' rather ; 
any gains from this would have been accompanied by more 
than countervailing losses. I cannot, therefore, doubt that 
the Latin Church did wisely and well in preferring ' Verbum' 
to ^Sermo;' indeed, it ultimately quite disallowed the latter; 
but still the doubts and hesitation which existed for some 
time upon this point ^ illustrate well the difficulty of which 
I am speaking. 

Or take another question, not altogether unlike this. 
Was the old ' poenitentia,' or the ^ resipiscentia,' which some 
of the Reformers sought to introduce in its room, the 
better rendering of fxeravoia'^. should fjieravoetre be ren- 
dered ^ poenitete' or 'resipisciteT ^ The Roman Catholic 
theologians found great fault with Beza, that instead of the 
' poenitentia,' hallowed by long ecclesiastical usage, and 
having acquired a certain prescriptive right by its long 
employment in the Yulgate, he, in his translation of Scrip- 
ture substituted ' resipiscentia.' Now Beza, and those who 
stood with him in this controversy, were assuredly right in 
replying, that while a serious displeasure on the sinner's 

^ See Petavius, De Trin. vi. i. 4. 
* See Fred. Spanheim's Dub. Evangelica, pars 3% dab. vii.; Campbell, 
On the Four Gosjpels, vol. i. p. 292, sqq. 



ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 37 

part at his past life is an important element in all true 
lueravoia or repentance, still ' poeniteDtia' is at fault, in that 
it brings out nothing but this, leaves the changed mind for 
the time to come, which is the central idea of the original 
word, altogether unexpressed and untouched ; that, more- 
over, 'resipiscentia'' was no such novelty, Lactantius having 
already shown the way in a rendering with which now so 
much fault was found. Taking his ground rigidly on 
etymology, Beza was quite right ; but it was also true, 
which he did not take account of, that /u^rdvoia, even before 
it had been assumed into scriptural usage, and much more 
after, had acquired a superadded sense of regret for the 
past, or 'hadiwist' (had-I-wist), as our ancestors called it; 
which, if ' poenitentia' seemed to embody too exclusively, 
his ' resipiscentia,' making at least as serious an omission, 
hardly embodied at all. On the whole, I cannot but think 
that it would have been better to leave ' poenitentia' undis- 
turbed, while yet how much on either side there was here 
to be urged. 

It may be worth while to consider a little in what ways 
our own Translators have sought to overcome some of 
these difficulties of translation, which have met them, as 
they have met all others, so to speak, on the threshold of 
their work. Of course, wherever they acquiesced in pre- 
ceding solutions of these difficulties, they adopted and made 
them their own ; and we have a right to deal with them as 
responsible for such. 

Let us take, first, a question which in all translation is 
constantly recurring — this, namely : In what manner ought 
technical words of the one language, which have no exact 
equivalents in the other, to be rendered ; measures, for 
instance, of wet and dry, as the j3aroc and Kopog of Luke 
xvi. 6, 7 ; the fjLtrgrjTtig of John ii. 6 ; coins, such as the 



38 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 

^iSpaxf-iov of Matt. xvii. 24 ; the (TTarrjp of Matt. xvii. 27 ; 
the ^paxjuri of Luke xv. 8 ; titles of honour and authority 
which have long since ceased to be, and to which, at best, 
only remote resemblances now exist, as the -ypo/zjuartuc ^^^ 
vEijjKopog of Acts xix. ^^ ; the ^Acnapx^ii of the same chapter, 
ver. ^l; the avOvTrarog of Acts xiii. 7 ? 

The ways in which such words may be dealt with reduce 
themselves to four, and our Translators, by turns, have 
recourse to them all. The first, which is only possible 
when the etymology of the word is clear and transparent, 
is to seize this, and to produce a new technical word which 
shall utter over again in the language of the translation 
what the original word uttered to its own. This course 
was chosen when they rendered "ApBiog Trdyog, "Mars' 
hiir' (Acts xvii. 22), AidocrrpMrov, 'the Pavement' 
(John xix. 13); when Sir John Cheke rendered l/carov- 
Tapx<^^} 'hundreder' (Matt.viii. 5), o-EXrjym^o/x^voc, 'mooned' 
(Matt. iv. 24). But the number of words which allow of 
this reproduction is comparatively small. Of many the 
etymology is lost ; many others do not admit the formation 
of a corresponding word in another language. This scheme, 
therefore, whatever advantages it may possess, can of neces- 
sity be very sparingly applied. 

Another method, then, is to choose some generic word, 
such as must needs exist in both languages, the genus of 
which the word to be rendered is the species, and without 
attempting any more accurate designation, to employ this. 
Our Translators have frequently taken this course; they 
have done so, rendering [3drog, Kopog, x**^^'?? alike by 
' measure' (Luke xvi. 6, 7 ; Rev. vi. 6), with no endeavours 
to mark the capacity of the measure ; ^paxjurj by " piece 
of silver" (Luke xv. 8), (Trarrip by " piece of money" (Matt, 
xvii. 27), avOvwarog by ' deputy' (Acts xiii. 8), orjjarrjyoi 



ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 39 

by * magistrates'* (Acts xvi. 22), fxayoi by "wise men" (Matt. 
ii. i). A manifest disadvantage which attends this course 
is the want of a close correspondence between the original 
and the copy, a certain vagueness which is given to the latter, 
with the obliteration of strongly marked lines. 

Or, thirdly, they may seek out some special word in the 
language into which the translation is being made, which 
shall be more or less an approximative equivalent for that 
in whose place it stands. We have two not very happy 
illustrations of this scheme in * town-clerk,' as the rendering 
of ypaij,juaTEvg (Acts xix. ^^)j 'Easter' as that of Uaaxa 
(Acts xii. 4). The turning of "Apre/ztc iiito ' Diana' (Acts 
xix. 24), of 'Epjurig into ' Mercurius' (Acts xiv. 12), are, in 
fact, other examples of the same, although our Translators 
themselves, no doubt, were not aware of it, seeing that in 
their time the essential distinction between the Greek and 
the Italian mythologies, and the fact that the names of the 
deities in the former were only adapted with more or less 
fitness to the deities of the latter, was unknown even to 
scholars. This method of translating has its own serious 
drawback, that, although it often gives a distinct and 
vigorous, yet it runs the danger of conveying a more or 
less false, impression. Except by a very singular felicity, 
and one which will not often occur, the word selected, while 
it conveys some truth, must also convey some error bound 
up with the truth. Thus Ko^pavrrjg is not a 'farthing' 
(Mark xii. 42), nor Srivapiov a ' penny' (Matt. xx. 2), nor 
fierptiTrjc a ' firkin^ (John il 6) ; not, I mean, our farthing, 
or penny, or firkin. So, too, if "piece of money" is a 
vague translation of ^pa^r) (Luke xv. 8), Wiclif s ' bezant' 
and Tyndale's ' grote' involve absolute error. Add to this 
the danger that the tone and colouring of one time and 
age may thus be substituted for that of another, of the 



40 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 

modem world for the ancient, as when Holland, in his 
translation of Livy, constantly renders " Pontifex Maximus" 
by 'Archbishop,' and it will be seen that the inconveniences 
attending this course are not small. 

There remains only one other way possible. To take the 
actual word of the original, and to transplant it unchanged, 
or at most with a slight change in the termination, into the 
other tongue, in the trust that time and use will, little by 
little, cause the strangeness of it to disappear, and that its 
meaning will gradually be acquired even by the unlearned 
reader. We have done this in respect of many Hebrew 
words in the Old Testament, as * Urim,' ' Thummim," 
' ephod,' ' shekel,' ' cherub,' ' seraphim,' 'cor,' 'bath,' ' ephah ;' 
and with some Greek in the New, as ' tetrarch,' ' proselyte,' 
' Paradise,' ' pentecost,' ' Messias ;' or by adopting these 
words from preceding translations have acquiesced in the 
fitness of this course. The disadvantage of it evidently is, 
that in many cases the adopted word continues always an 
exotic for the mass of the people : it never tells its own 
story to them, nor becomes, so to speak, transparent wdth 
its own meaning. 

It is impossible to adhere rigidly and constantly to any 
one of these devices for representing the things of one con- 
dition of society by the words of another ; they must all in 
their turn be appealed to, even as they all will be found 
barely sufficient. Our Translators have employed them all. 
Their inclination, as compared with others, is perhaps 
toward the second, the least ambitious, but at the same 
time the safest, of these courses. Once or twice they have 
chosen it when one of the other ways appears manifestly 
preferable, as in their rendering of avOinrarog by ' deputy' 
(Acts xiii. 7, 8, 12), 'proconspl' being ready made to their 
hands, with Wiclif's authority for its use. 



ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 41 

There is another question, doubtless a perplexing one, 
which our Translators had to solve ; I confess that I much 
regret the solution at which they have arrived. It was 
this : how should they deal with the Hebrew proper names 
of the Old Testament, which had gradually assumed a form 
somewhat dijSerent from their original on the lips of Greek- 
speaking Jews, and which appeared in these their later 
Hellenistic forms in the New Testament? Should they 
bring them back to their original shapes ? or suffer them 
to stand in their later deflections ? Thus, meeting 'RXlag 
in the Greek text, should they render it ' Elias' or ' Elijah' ? 
I am persuaded that for the purpose of keeping vivid and 
strong the relations between the Old and New Testament 
in the minds of the great body of English hearers and 
readers of Scripture, they should have recurred to the Old 
Testament names ; which are not merely the Hebrew, but 
also the English names, and which, therefore, had their 
right to a place in the English text ; that 'HX/ac, for 
instance, should Lave been translated into that which is 
not merely its Hebrew, but also its English equivalent, 

* Elijah,' and so with the others. Let us just seek to reahze 
to ourselves the difference in the amount of awakened 
attention among a country congregation, which Matt. xvii. 
lo would create, if it were read thus, " And his disciples 
asked him, saying. Why then say the Scribes that Elijah 
must first come V as compared with what it now is likely 
to create. As it is, we have a double nomenclature, and as 
respects the unlearned members of the Church, a sufficiently 
perplexing one, for a large number of the kings and pro- 
phets, and other personages of the earlier Covenant. Not 
to speak of 'Elijah' and 'Elias,' we have ' Elisha' and 

* Eliseus," ' Hosea' and ' Osee,' ' Isaiah' and ' Esaias,' ' Uzziah' 
and ' Ozias,' ' Hezekiah' and ' Ezechias,' ' Korah' and ' Core' 
(commonly pronounced as a monosyllable in our National 



42 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 

Schools), * Rahab' and ' Rachab/ and (most unfortunate of 
all) 'Joshua' and ' Jesus/ t/K^'^-'^' V '' ^" 

It is indeed hardly possible to exaggerate the confusion 
of which the ' Jesus' of Heb. iv. 8 must be the occasion to 
the great body of unlearned English readers and hearers, 
not to speak of a slight perplexity arising from the same 
cause at Acts vii. 45. The fourth chapter of the Hebrews 
is anyhow hard enough ; it is only with strained attention 
that we follow the Apostle's argument. But when to its 
own difficulty is added for many the confusion arising from 
the fact that * Jesus' is here used, not of Him whose name 
is above every name, but of the son of Nun, known every- 
where in the Old Testament by the name of ' Joshua,' the 
perplexity to many becomes hopeless. It is in vain that 
our Translators have added in the margin, " that is Josuah ;" 
for all practical purposes of avoiding misconception the 
note, in most of our Bibles omitted, is useless. In putting 
* Jesus' here they have departed from all our preceding 
Versions, and from many foreign. Even if they had counted 
that the letter of their obligation as Translators, which yet 
I cannot think, bound them to this, one would willingly 
have here seen a breach of the letter, that so they might 
better keep the spirit. 

There is another difficulty, entailing, however, no such 
serious consequences, even if the best way of meeting it is 
not chosen : how, namely, to deal with Greek and Latin 
proper names ? to make them in their terminations English, 
or to leave them as we find them ? Our Translators in this 
matter adhere to no constant rule. It is not merely that 
some proper names drop their classical terminations, as 
' Paul,' and ' Saul,' and ' Urban,' ^ while others, as ' Sylvanus/ 



'^ So it ouglit to be printed in our modern Bibles, not * Urbane,' which 



ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 43 

which by the same rule should be * Sylvan/ and * Mercurius/ 
retain it. This inconsistency is prevalent in all books which 
have to do with classical antiquity. There is almost no 
Koman history in which 'Pompey' and 'Antony' do not 
stand side by side with ' Augustus' and ' Tiberius/ Meri- 
vale's, who always writes ' Pompeius' and ' Antonius/ is 
almost the only exception which I know. If this were all, 
there would be little to find fault with in an irregularity 
almost, if not quite, universal, and scarcely to be avoided 
without so much violence done to usage as to make it doubtful 
whether the gain exceeded the loss.^ But in our Version 
the same name occurs now with a Latin ending, now with 
an English ; as though it were now ' Pompeius' and now 
* Pompey,' now ' Antonius' and now ' Antony,' in the same 
volume, or even the same page, of some Roman history. 
Consistency in such details is avowedly difficult ; and the 
difficulty of attaining it must have been much enhanced 
by the many hands that were engaged in our Version. 
But it is strange that not in different parts of the New 
Testament only, which proceeded from different hands, we 
have now * Marcus' (Col. iv. lo; Philem. 24; i Pet. v. 13), 
and now 'Mark' (Acts xii. 12, 25; 2 Tim. iv. 11); now 
' Jeremias' (Matt. xvi. 14), and now 'Jeremy' (Matt. ii. 17); 
now ' Apollos' (Acts xviii. 24 ; xix. 1), now ' Apollo'^ (i Cor. 
iii. 22 ; iv. 6) ; now " Simon, son of Jona" (John i. 42), 



is now deceptive, though it was not so according to the orthography 
of 1 61 1; it suggests a trisyllable, and the termination of a female 
name. It is Ovp^avov in the original. 

^ See an article with the title, OrthograpJiic Mutineers, in the Mis- 
cellaneous Essays of De Quincey. 

2 This latter form, which was manifestly inconvenient, as confounding 
the name of an eminent Christian teacher with that of a heathen deity, 
has been tacitly removed from later editions of our Bible, but existed in 
all the earlier. 



44 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 

and now " Simon, son of Jonas'' (John xxL 15, 16, 17); 
now ' Timotheus' (Acts xvi. 1), and now ' Timothy' (Heb. 
xiii. 21) ; but in the same chapter we have Tifiod^og rendered 
first ' Timothy' (3 Cor. i. i), and then 'Timotheus' (i6.ver.19). 
In like manner the inhabitants of Crete (KpriTeg) are now 
' Cretes' (Acts ii. 1 1), which cannot be right,, and now 
* Cretians' (Tit. i. la). 

There are other inconsistencies in the manner of dealing 
with proper names. Thus, "Aptfoc Tlayog is 'Areopagus' 
at Acts xvii. 19, while three verses further on the same is 
rendered ' Mars-hill.' In which of these ways it ought to 
have been translated may very fairly be a question ; but 
one way or other, once chosen, should have been adhered to. 
Then, again, if our Translators gave, as they properly did, 
the Latin termination to the names of cities, ' Ephesits,' 
' Miletus,' ^ not ' Ephesos,' ' Miletos,' they should have done 
this throughout, and written ' Ass^ts' (Acts xx. 13, 14), and 
' Pergamus' (Rev. i. 1 1 ; ii. 12), not * Assos' and ' Pergamos.' 
In regard of this last, it would have been better still if they 
had employed the form 'Pergamum;' for while no doubt 
there are examples of the feminine nipyajuog in Greek 
authors,^ they are excessively rare, and the city's name is 
almost always written Uipyafjiov in Greek, and ' Pergamum' 
in Latin.^ 

It is the carrying of one rule through which one desires 



^ A singular mistake, the use of ' Miletwm' at 2 Tim. iv. 20, has 
been often noted. This is one of the errors into which our Translators 
would probably not have fallen themselves, but have inherited it from 
the Versions preceding, all which have it. Yet it is strange that they 
did not correct it here, seeing that it, or a similar error ' Mileton,' had 
at Acts XX. 15, 17, been by them discovered and removed, and the city's 
name rightly given, ' Miletus.' 

^ Ptol. V. 2, cf. Lobeck's Fhrynichus, p. 422. 

^ Xenophon, Andb. vii. 8, 8 ; Strabo, xiii. 4 ; Pliny, S. JV. xxxv. 46. 



ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 45 

in these matters, and this is not seldom exactly what we 
miss. Thus, seeing that in the enumeration of the precious 
stones which constitute the foundations of the New Jerusa- 
lem (Eev. xxi. 19, 20), all with the exception of two, which 
are capable of receiving an English termination, do receive 
it, * beryl' and not * beryllus,' ' chrysolite'^ and not ' chryso- 
lithus,' ^jacinth' and not 'jacinthus,' we might fairly ask 
that these should not be exceptionally treated. It should 
therefore be ' chrysoprase/ and not ' chrysoprasus.' Sap^toc 
is somewhat more difficult to deal with ; but the word is as 
much an adjective here as adp^ivog at Rev. iv. 3, XiOog, 
which is there exprest, being here understood (we have 
"Sardius lapis" in Tertullian), and it would have been 
better to translate " a sardine stone'" here as has been done 
there ; (rap^iovy not aap^iog, is the Greek name of this 
stone, and ^ sarda' the Latin, which last Holland has natu- 
ralized in English, and written 'sard.' The choice lay 
between " sardine stone" and ' sard ;' unless, indeed, they 
had boldly ventured upon * ruby.' ' Sardius,' which they 
have employed, as it seems to me, is anyhow incorrect, 
though the Yulgate may be quoted in its favour. 

Hammond affirms, and I must needs consider with 
reason, that " Tres Tabernse" should have been left in its 
Latin form (Acts xxviii. 15), and not rendered " The Three 
Taverns." It is a proper name, just as much as "Appii 
Forum," which occurs in the same verse, and which rightly 
we have not resolved into " The Market of Appius." Had 
we left "Tres Tabernse" untouched (I observe DeWette does 
so), we should then have only dealt as the sacred historian 
has himself dealt with it, who has merely written it in 



^ Mis-spelt ' chrysol^f^e/ and the etymology obscured, in all our 
modern editions, but correctly given in tbe exemplar edition of 161 1. 



46 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 

Greek letters, not turned into equivalent Greek words. As 
little should we have turned it into Enghsh. 

Sometimes our Translators have carried too far, as I 
cannot but think, the turning of qualitative genitives into 
adjectives. Oftentimes it is prudently done, and with a 
due recognition of the Hebrew idiom which has moulded 
the Greek phrase with which they have to deal. Thus, 
" forgetful hearer" is unquestionably better than " hearer 
of forgetfulness" (Jam. i. 25); "his natural face" than 
"face of his nature,^' or " of his generation" (ih.) ; " unjust 
steward" than "steward of injustice" (Luke xvi. 8). Yet 
at other times they have done this without necessity, and 
occasionally with manifest loss. " Son of his love," which 
the Rheims version has, would have been better than 
"beloved son"^ (Col. i. 1^), and certainly "the body of our 
vileness," or "of our humiliation," better than "our vile 
body ;" " the body of his glory" than " his glorious body" 
(Phil. iii. 21). " The uncertainty of riches" (i Tim. vi. 17), 
would be better than "uncertain riches" (1 Tim. vi. 17), 
" children of the curse" than " cursed children" (2 Pet. ii. 
14). " The glorious liberty of the children of God" 
(Rom. viii. 21), not merely comes short of, but expresses 
something very different from, " the liberty of the glory of 
the children of God" (see Alford, in loco). Doubtless the 
accumulated genitives are here awkward to deal with ; it 
was probably to avoid them that the translation assumed 
its present shape ; but still, when higher interests are at 
stake, such awkwardness must be endured, and elsewhere 
our Translators have not shrunk from it, as at Rev. xvi. 19: 
" The cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath." 



^ Augustine {De Trin. xv. 19) lays a dogmatic stress on the genitive, 
(Filius caritatis ejus nullus est alius, quam qui de substantia Ejus est 
genitus) but this may be questioned. 



CHAPTER lY. 

ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 

LET me here, before entering on this subject, make one 
remark, which, having an especial reference to the 
subject-matter of this and the following chapter, more or 
less bears upon all. It has been already observed that the 
advantages doubtless were great, of coming, as our Trans- 
lators did, in the rear of other translators, of inheriting 
from those who went before them so large a stock of work 
well done, of successful renderings, of phrases consecrated 
already by long usage in the Church. It was a signal gain 
that they had not, in the fabric which they were construct- 
ing, to make a new framework throughout, but needed only 
here and there to insert new materials where the old from 
any cause were faulty or out of date ; that of them it was 
not demanded that they should make a translation where 
none existed before ; nor yet that they should bring a good 
translation out of a bad or an indifferent one ; but only a 
best, and that not out of one, but out of many good ones 
preceding. None who have ever engaged in the work of 
translating but will freely acknowledge that in this their 
gain was most real ; and they well understood how to turn 
these advantages to account. 

Yet vast as these, doubtless, were, they were not without 
certain accompanying drawbacks. He who revises, espe- 
cially when he comes to the task of revision with a confi- 
dence, here abundantly justified, in the general excellency 



48 ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 

of that which he is revising, is in constant danger of 
allowing his vigilance to sleep, and of thus passing over 
errors, which he would not himself have originated, had he 
been thrown altogether on his own resources. I cannot but 
think that in this way the watchfulness of our Translators, 
or revisers rather, has been sometimes remitted ; and that 
errors and inaccuracies, which they would not themselves 
have introduced, they have yet passed by and allowed. A 
large proportion of the errors in our Translation are thus an 
inheritance from former versions. This is not, indeed, any 
excuse, for they who passed them by became responsible 
for them ; but is merely mentioned as accounting for the 
existence of many. With this much of introduction, I will 
pass on to the proper subject of this chapter. 

Our Translators sometimes create distinctions such as 
have no counterparts in their original, by using two or more 
words to render at different places, or it may be at the 
same place, a single word in the Greek text. I would not 
by any means affirm that such varieties of rendering are not 
sometimes, nay frequently, inevitable. It manifestly would 
not be possible to represent constantly one word in one 
language by one in another. If this has ever been proposed 
as an inflexible rule, it must have been on the assumption 
that words in one language cover exactly the same spaces 
of meaning which other words do in another, that they 
have exactly the same many-sidedness, the same elasticity, 
the same power of being applied, it may be, now in a good 
sense, now in a bad. But nothing is further from the 
case. Words are enclosures from the great outfield of 
meanings ; but dififerent languages have enclosed on dif- 
ferent schemes, and words in different languages which are 
precisely co-extensive with one another, are much rarer 
than we incuriously assume. 



ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 49 

It is easy to illustrate this, the superior elasticity of a 
word in one language to that of one which is in part its 
equivalent in another. Thus, we have no word in English 
which at once means heavenly messengers and earthly, with 
only the context determining which is intended. There 
was no choice, therefore, but to render ayyeXot by 'mes- 
sengers ' at Luke vii. ^^4 ; ix. 52 ; Jam. ii. 25 ; however it 
was translated ' angels ' in each other passage of the New 
Testament where it occurs. Again, no word in English has 
the power which juayog has in Greek, of being used at will 
in an honorable sense or a dishonorable. There was no 
help^ therefore, but to render fxdyoi by ' wise men,' ^ or some 
such honorable designation. Matt. ii. i ; and fxayoq by 

* sorcerer,' Acts xiii. 6. 

Thus, again, it would have been difficult to represent 
YlapdK\r)TOQ, applied now to the Holy Spirit (John xiv. 16, 
26), and now to Christ (i Johnl, -^i), by any single word. 

* Paraclete ' would alone have been possible ; and such uni- 
formity of rendering, if indeed it could be called rendering 
at all, would have been dearly purchased by the loss of ' Com- 
forter' and 'Advocate,' — both of them Latin words, it is true, 
but much nearer to the heart and understanding of English- 
men than the Greek ' Paraclete ' could ever have become.^ 

So, too, it would have been unadvisable to render Kvpii. 



^ Milton, indeed, speaks of these wise men as the " star-led wizards" 
and ' wizard' is the word which Sir John Cheke employs in his transla- 
tion of St. Matthew ; but the word is scarcely honorable enough for 
the /Aa-yot of this place, nor opprobrious enough for the fxayos of the Acts. 

2 We should not forget, in measuring the fitness of ' Comforter,' that 
the fundamental idea of ' Comforter,' according to its etymology and its 
early use, is that of ' Strengthener,' and not ' Consoler ;' even as the 
7rapdK\r]TOs is one who, being summoned to the side of the accused or im- 
perilled man (advocatus), stands by to aid and to encourage. See the 
admirable note in Hare's Mission of the Comforter, pp. 521 — 527. 

E 



50 ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED* 

as the compellation of one person by another, always ' Sir/ 
or always ' Lord/ The word has a wider range than either of 
these two ; it is only the two together which cover an equal 
extent. * Sir/ in many cases would not be respectful enough ; 
'Lord' in some would be too respectful (John xx. 15). Our 
Translators have prudently employed both ; and in most 
cases have shown a fine tact in their selection of one or the 
other. My only doubt is whether, in the conversation of 
our Lord with the Samaritan woman (John iv.), they should 
not have changed the ' Sir," which is perfectly in its place 
at ver. i ] , where she is barely respectful to her unknown 
interrogator, into * Lord ' at ver. 15, or if not there, yet 
certainly at ver. 19. The Rheims version, beginning, as 
we do, with ' Sir,' already has exchanged this for ' Lord ' 
at ver. 15 ; and thus delicately indicates the growing reve- 
rence of the woman for the mysterious stranger whom she 
has met beside Jacob's well. 

We do not, then, make a general complaint against our 
Translators that they have varied their words where the 
original does not vary ; oftentimes this variation was inevi- 
table ; or, if not inevitable, yet was certainly the more excel- 
lent way; but that they have done this where it was wholly 
gratuitous, and where sometimes the force, vigour, and pre- 
cision of the original has consequently suffered not a little. 
It is true that the adoption of this course was not on their 
parts altogether of oversight ; and it will be only fair to hear 
what they, in an ' Address to the Reader,' now seldom or 
never reprinted, but, on many accounts, well worthy of 
being so,^ say upon this matter ; and how they defend what 



* Their " pedantic and uncouth preface" Symonds calls it. There 
would certainly be pedantry in any one now writing with such richness 
and fulness of learned allusion, a pedantry from which our comparatively 
scanty stores of classical and ecclesiastical learning would effectually 



ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 51 

they have done. "Another thing/' they say, "we think 
good to admonish thee of (gentle reader), that we have not 
tied ourselves to an uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity 
of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had' 
done, because they observe, that some learned men some- 
where have been as exact as they could that way. Truly, 
that we might not vary from the sense of that which we 
had translated before, if the word signified the same in 
both places (for there be some words be not of the same 
sense every where), we were especially careful, and made a 
conscience according to our duty. But that we should 
express the same notion in the same particular word ; as, 
for example, if we translate the> Hebrew or Greek word 
once by purpose, never to call it intent ; if one where 
journeying, never travelling ; if one where think, never 
suppose ; if one where pain, never ache ; if one where joy, 
never gladness, &c., thus to mince the matter, we thought 
to savour more of curiosity than wisdom, and that rather it 
would breed scorn in the atheist, than bring profit to the 
godly reader. For is the kingdom of God become words oi 
syllables ? why should we be in bondage to them, if we may 
be free, use one precisely when we may use another no less 
fit, as commodiously ? We might also be charged (by 
scoffers) with some unequal dealing toward a great number 
of good English words. For as it is written of a certain 



preserve most among us. But this preface is, on many grounds, a 
most interesting study, as giving at considerable length, and in various 
aspects, the view of our Translators themselves in regard of the work 
which they had undertaken ; and ' uncouth' as this objector calls it, every 
true knower of our language will acknowledge it a masterpiece of 
English. Certainly it would not be easy to find a more beautiful or 
affecting piece of writing than the twenty or thirty lines with which the 
fourth paragraph, " On the praise of the Holy Scriptures," concluden. 

E 2 



52 ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 

great philosopher, that he should say, that those logs were 
happy that were made images to be worshipped ; for their 
fellows, as good as they, lay for blocks behind the fire : so 
if we should say, as it were, unto certain words, Stand up 
higher, have a place in the Bible always, and to others of 
like quality, Get ye hence, be banished for ever, we might 
be taxed peradventure with St. James's words, namely * To 
be partial in our selves and judges of evil thoughts/'" 

This is their explanation — to me, I confess, an insufficient 
one, whatever ingenuity may be ascribed to it; and for these 
reasons. It is clearly the office of translators to put the 
reader of the translation, as nearly as may be, on the same 
vantage-ground as the reader of the original ; to give him, so 
far as this is attainable, the same assistances for understand- 
ing his author's meaning. Now every exact and laborious 
student of his Greek Testament knows that there is almost 
no such help in some passage of difficulty, doctrinal or 
other, as to turn to his Greek Concordance, to search out 
every other passage in which the word or words wherein 
the difficulty seems chiefly to reside, occur, and closely to 
observe their usage there. It is manifestly desirable that 
the reader of the English Bible should have, as nearly as 
possible, the same resource. But if, where there is one and 
the same word in the original, there are two, three, half-a- 
dozen in the version, he is in the main deprived of it. Thus 
he hears the doctrine of the atonement discussed ; he would 
fain turn to all the passages where ' atonement' occurs ; he 
finds only one (Rom. v. ii), and of course is unaware that 
in other passages where he meets ^ reconciling,' and ' recon- 
ciliation,' (Rom. xi. 15 ; 2 Cor. v. 18, 19,) it is the same 
word in the original. In words like this, which are, so to 
speak, sedes doctrince, one regrets, above all, variation and 
uncertainty in rendering. 



ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 53 

Thus it will sometimes happen, that when St. Paul is 
pursuing a close train of reasoning, and one which demands 
severest attention, the difficulties of his argument, not small 
in themselves, are aggravated by the use of different words 
where he has used the same ; the word being sometimes the 
very key of the whole ; as, for instance, in the fourth chapter 
of the Romans. AoyiZofxai occurs eleven times in this 
chapter. We may say that it is the key-word to St. Paul's 
argument throughout, being everywhere employed most 
strictly in the same sense, and that a technical and theo- 
logical. But our Translators have no fixed rule of rendering 
it. Twice they render it ' count,' (ver. 3, 5 ;) six times 
* impute,' (ver. 6, 8, j i, 22, 23, 24;) and three times 
' reckon,' (ver. 4, 9, 10 ;) while at Gal. iii. 6, they in- 
troduce a fourth rendering, ' account.' Let the student 
read this chapter, employing everywhere ' reckon,' or, 
which would be better, everywhere ' impute,' and observe 
how much of clearness and precision St. Paul's argument 
would in this way acquire. 

In other places no doctrine is in danger of being ob- 
scured, but still the change is uncalled for and injurious. 
Take, for instance, Rev. iv. 4 : " And round about the 
throne (Opovov) were four-and-twenty seats" (Opovoi). It 
is easy to see the motive of this variation ; and yet if the 
inspired Apostle was visited with no misgivings lest the 
creature should seem to be encroaching on the dignity of 
the Creator, and it is clear that he was not, — on the con- 
trary, he has, in the most marked manner, brought the 
throne of God and the thrones of the elders together, — cer- 
tainly the Translators need not have been more careful than 
he had been, nor made the elders to sit on ' seats,' and only 
God on a ' throne.' This august company of the four-and- 
twenty elders represents the Church of the Old and the 



54 ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 

New Testament, each in its twelve heads; but how much 
is lost by turning their ^ thrones' into 'seats ;' for example, 
the connexion of this Scripture with Matt. xix. 28 ; and 
with all the promises that Christ's servants should not 
merely see his glory, but share it, that they should be 
(TvvOpovoi with Him (Rev. iii. 21), this little change ob- 
scuring the truth that they are here set before us as o-u/x- 
ftacnX^vovrag (t Cor. iv. 8 ; 2 Tim. ii. 12), as kings reign- 
ing with Him. This truth is saved, indeed, by the 
mention of the golden crowns on their heads, but is im- 
plied also in their sitting, as they do in the Greek but not 
in the English, on seats of equal dignity with his, on 
' thrones."* The same scruple which dictated this change 
makes itself felt through the whole translation of the 
Apocalypse, and to a manifest loss. In that book is set 
forth, as nowhere else in Scripture, the hellish parody of 
the heavenly kingdom ; the conflict between the true King 
of the earth and the usurping king ; the loss, therefore, is 
evident, when for "Satan's throne" is substituted "Satan's 
seat" (ii. 13) ; for " the throne of the beast," "the seat of 
the beast" (xvi. 10). 

A great master of language will often implicitly refer in 
some word which he uses to the same word, or, it may be, 
to another of the same group or family, which he or some 
one else has just used before ; and where there is evidently 
intended such an allusion, it should, wherever this is pos- 
sible, be reproduced in the translation. There are two 
examples of this in St. Paul's discourse at Athens, both of 
which have been effaced in our Yersiou. Of those who en- 
countered Paul in the market at Athens, some said, " He 
seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods" (Acts xvii. 18). 
They use the word KarayycXcvc ; and he, remembering and 
taking up this word, retorts it upon them : " Whom, there- 



ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 55 

fore, ye ignorantly worship, Him set I forth (icarayycXXw) 
unto you " (ver . 23). He has their charge present in his 
mind, and this is his answer to their charge. It would more 
plainly appear such to the English reader, if the Translators, 
having used " setter forth'' before, had thus returned upon 
the word, instead of substituting, as they have done, 
' declare' for it. The Rheims version, which has ^ preacher' 
and ' preach,' after theYulgate ' annuntiator' and * annuntio,' 
has been careful to retain and indicate the connexion. 

But the finer and more delicate turns of the divine 
rhetoric of St. Paul are more seriously affected by another 
oversight in the same verse. We make him there say, " As 
I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar 
with this inscription. To the Unknown God (ayvworw Qetf). 
Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly (dyvoovvreg) worship. Him 
declare I unto you." But if anything is clear, it is that 
St. Paul in dyvoovvTeg intends to take up the preceding 
ayvujartt)', the chime of the words, and also, probably, the 
fact of their etymological connexion, leading him to this. 
He has spoken of their altar to an " Unhnovjn God," and 
he proceeds, " whom, therefore, ye worship unknowing, 
Him declare I unto you." ' Ignorantly' has the further 
objection that it conveys more of rebuke than St. Paul, who 
is sparing his hearers to the uttermost, intended. 

In other passages also the point of a sentence lies in the 
recurrence and repetition of the same word, which yet they 
have failed to repeat ; as in these which follow : 

1 Cor. iii. 17. — " If any man defile (({iOeipu) the temple of 
God, him shall God destroy ((pSepu)/' It is the fearful 
law of retaliation which is here proclaimed. He who ruins 
shall himself be ruined in turn. It shall be done to him, 
as he has done to the temple of God. Undoubtedly it is 
hard to get the right word, which will suit in both places. 



56 ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 

' Corrupt' is the first which suggests itself ; yet it would 
not do to say " If any man corrupt the temple of God, him 
shall God corrupt." The difficulty which our Translators 
felt, it is evident that the Yulgate felt the same, which, in 
like manner, has changed its word : Si quis autem templum 
Dei violaverit, disperdet ilium Deus. Yet why should 
not the verse be rendered, " If any man destroy the temple 
of God, him shall God destroy"? 

Matt. xxi. 41. — A difficulty of exactly the same kind 
exists here ; where yet the kokovq kqkwq of the origiual 
ought, in some way or other, to have been preserved ; as 
in this way it might very sufficiently be : " He will 
TTiiserably destroy those miserable men/' — Neither would 
it have been hard at 2 Thess. i. 6, to retain the play upon 
Avords, and to have rendered rolg OXlJ^ovcflv vfiag OXl^piv^ 
" affliction to them that afflict you," instead of " tribula- 
tion to them that trouble you,"" there being no connexion 
in English between the words 'tribulation' and 'trouble,' 
though something of a likeness in sound : while yet the very 
purpose of the passage is to show that what wicked men 
have measured to others shall be measured to them again. 

Let me indicate other examples of the same kind, where 
the loss is manifest. Thus, if at Gal. iii. 22, awiKkHa^v 
is translated, ^iiath conchided,' (jvyKXuofi^voL in the next 
verse, which takes it up, should not be rendered ' shut up.' 
The Vulgate has well, ' conclusit' and ' conclusi.' Let the 
reader substitute ' hath shut up' for ' hath concluded' in 
ver. 22, and then read the passage. He will be at once 
aware of the gain. In like manner, let him take Rom. vii. 7, 
and read " I had not known lust (tTriOviuiav) except the law 
had said. Thou shalt not lust {ovk liridvfxnauq) ;" or Phil, 
ii. 13 : " It is God which worketh (6 Iv^pytov) in you both 
to will and to work {to Iv^pyetv) ;" and the passages will 



ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTEODUCED. 57 

come out with a strength and clearness which they have 
not now. So, too, if at a, Thess. ii. 6, to Karix^v is rendered 
"what vjithholdeth/' 6 fcartx^v in the verse following should 
not be "he who letteth." While, undoubtedly, there is 
significance in the impersonal to Karexov exchanged for the 
personal 6 Karlxwv, there can be no doubt that they refer 
to one and the same person or institution ; but this is 
obscured by the change of the word. So, too, I would have 
gladly seen the connexion between XetTro/xcvot and XdireTui 
at Jam. i. 4, 5, reproduced in our Version. ' Lacking' and 
' lack' which our previous versions had, would have done it. 
The " patience and comfort of the Scriptures'' (Rom. xv. 4) 
is derived from " the God of patience and comfort" (ver. 5); 
this St. Paul would teach, who uses both times irapaKXnGig : 
but there is a slight obscuration of the connexion between 
the 'comfort' and the Author of the 'comfort' in our Version, 
which, on the second occasion, has for ' comfort' needlessly 
substituted ' consolation.' 

How many readers have read in the English the third 
chapter of St. John, and missed the remarkable connexion 
between our Lord's words at ver. Ii, and the Baptist's 
taking up of those words at ver. 32 ; and this because 
fiapTvpia is translated ' witness' on the former occasion, and 
'testimony' on the latter. — Why, again, we may ask, 
should vj3pig koI Z^np-ia be " hurt and damage" at Acts 
xxvii. 10; and "harm and loss," at their recurrence, 
ver. ;a I ? Both renderings are good, and it would not much 
import which had been selected ; but whichever had been 
employed on the first occasion ought also to have been 
employed on the second. St. Paul, repeating in the midst 
of the danger the very words which he had used when 
counselling his fellow voyagers how they might avoid that 
danger, would remind them, that so he might obtain a 



58 ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 

readier hearing now, of that neglected warning of his, 
which the sequel had only justified too well. 

These are less important, and might well be passed by, 
if anything could be counted unimportant which helps or 
hinders ever so little the more exact setting forth of the 
Word of God. Thus, in the parable of the Labourers in 
the Vineyard (Matt. xx. i,) oiKo^Eo-TroVrjC is ' householder,' 
ver. I, it should scarcely be "good man of the house'"' at 
ver. 11.^ As little should the ^^ governor of the feast'' of 
John ii. 8, be " the ruler of the feast" in the very next verse ; 
or the " goodly apparel," of Jam. ii. 2, be the " gay clothing" 
of the verse following, the words of the original in each case 
remaining unchanged. 

Again, it would have been clearly desirable that where 
in two or even three Gospels exactly the same words, 
recording the same event or the same conversation, occur 
in the original, the identity should have been expressed by 
the use of exactly the same words in the Enghsh. This 
continually is not the case. Thus, Matt. xxvi. 41, and 
Mark xiv. 38, exactly correspond in the Greek, while in the 
translation the words appear in St. Matthew : " Watch and 
pray, that ye enter not into temptation ; the spirit indeed 
is willing, but the flesh is weak ;" in St. Mark : " Watch ye 
and pray, lest ye enter into temptation ; the spirit truly is 
ready, but the flesh is weak." So too in a quotation from 
the Old Testament, where two or more sacred writers cite 
it in identical words, this fact ought to be reproduced in the 



^ Scholefield {Hints, p. 8) further objects to this last rendering as 
having " a qiiaintness in it not calculated to recommend it." But it 
had nothing of the kind at the time our Translation was made. Compare 
Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 5, 34 : 

"There entering in, thej found the goodman self 
Full busily upon his work ybent." 



ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 59 

Yersion. It is not so in respect of the important quotation 
from Gen. xv. 6 ; but on the three occasions that it is quoted 
(Rom. iv. 3; Gal. iii. 5; Jam. ii. 23) it appears with 
variations, slight, indeed, and not in the least affecting 
the sense, but yet which would better have been avoided. 
Again, the phrase 60-^17 evw^iag, occurring twice in the New 
Testament, has so fixed, and I may say, so technical a sig- 
nificance, referring as it does to a continually recurring 
phrase of the Old Testament, that it should not be rendered 
on one occasion, ''a sweet-smelling savour'' (Eph. v. 2), on 
the other, " an odour of a sweet smeir' (Phil. iv. 18), 

Sometimes interesting and important relations between 
different parts of Scripture would come out more strongly, 
if what is precisely similar in the original had reappeared 
as precisely similar in the translation. The Epistles to 
the Ephesians and to the Colossians profess to have been 
sent from Rome to the East by the same messenger (cf. 
Eph. vi. 2,1, 22; Col. iv. 7, 8); they were ^vritten there- 
fore, we may confidently conclude, about the same time. 
When we come to examine their internal structure, 
this exactly bears out what under such circumstances we 
should expect in letters proceeding from the pen of St. 
Paul — great differences, but at the same time remarkable 
points of contact and resemblance, both in the thoughts 
and in the words which are the garment of the thoughts. 
Paley has urged this as an internal evidence for the truth 
of those statements which these Epistles make about them- 
selves. This internal evidence doubtless exists even now 
for the English reader; but it would press itself on his 
attention much more strongly, if the exact resemblances in 
the originals had been represented by exact resemblances 
in the copies. This oftentimes has not been the case. 
Striking coincidences in language between one Epistle and 



60 ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 

the other, which exist in the Greek, do not exist in the 
EngHsh. For example, evipyeia is 'working,' Eph.i. 19; it is 
'operation,' Col. ii. 12 ; Tairuvoippoavvr] is 'lowliness', Eph. 
iv. 2; "humbleness of mind," Col. iii. 12; (Tu/x/3f/3a^o/x£vov is 

* compacted,' Eph. iv. 16; " knit together," Col. ii. j 9, with 
much more of the same kind ; as is accurately brought out 
by the late Professor Blunt,^ who draws one of the chief 
motives why the Clergy should study the Scriptures in 
the original languages, from the short-comings which exist 
in the translations of them. 

It may be interesting, before leaving this branch of the 
subject, to take a few words, and to note the variety of 
rendering to which they are submitted in our Version. I 
have not taken them altogether at random, yet some of 
these are by no means the most remarkable instances in 
their kind. They will, however, sufficiently illustrate the 
matter in hand. 

'A0£rfw, 'to reject' (Mark vi. 26); 'to despise' (Luke 
X. 16); 'to bring to nothing' (i Cor. i. ig)) 'to frustrate' 
(Gal. ii. 21); 'to disannul' (Gal. iii. 15); 'to cast off' 
(i Tim. V. 12). 

'AvaoToroo), ' to turn upside down' (Acts xvii. 6) ; 'to 
make an uproar' (Acts xxi. 38); 'to trouble' (Gal. v. 12). 

^ kiroKakv^LQ, * revelation' (Rom. ii. 5) ; ' manifestation' 
(Rom. viii. 19); 'coming' (i Cor. i. 7); 'appearing' 
(iPet. i. 7). 

AeXeaJw, 'to entice' (Jam. i. 14); 'to beguile' (2 Pet. 
ii. 14); 'to allure' (2 Pet. ii. t8). 

Zocpog, 'darkness' (2 Pet. ii. 4); 'mist' (2 Pet. ii. ij); 

* blackness' (Jude 13). 



* Duties of tlie Parish Priest, p. 71. The whole section (pp. 47 — 
76) is eminently instructive. 



ON SOME UNNECESSAEY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 61 

Karapyeo), Ho cumber* (Luke xiii. 7); 'to make without 
effect' (Rom. iii. 3); 'to make void* (Rom. iii. 31); 'to 
make of none effect* (Rom. iv. 14) ; ' to destroy* (Rom. vi. 
6); 'to loose* (Rom. vii. 2); 'to deliver* (Rom. vii. 6); 'to 
bring to nought* (1 Cor. i. 8); ' to do away* (i Cor. xiii. Jo); 
'to put away* (i Cor. xiii. 11); 'to put down* (r Cor. xv. 
24) ; ' to abolish* (2 Cor. iii. 13). Add to these, Karapyiofjiaij 
'to come to nought* (i Cor. ii. 6); 'to fail* (i Cor. xiii. 8); 
' to vanish away* (ibid.) ; ' to become of none effect* (Gal. 
V. 4) ; ' to cease* (Gal. v. 11); and we have here seventeen 
different renderings of this word, occurring in all twenty- 
seven times in the New Testament. 

KarapTiZd), 'to mend* (Matt. iv. 21); 'to perfect* (Matt, 
xxi. 16) ; 'to fit* (Rom. ix. 22) ; ' to perfectly join together* 
(1 Cor. i. 10) ; 'to restore* (Gal. vi. i) ; 'to prepare* (Heb. x. 5) ; 
* to frame* (Heb. xi. 3) ; 'to make perfect* (Heb. xiii. 21). 

Kavxaojuai, 'to make boast* (Rom. ii. 17); 'to rejoice* 
(Rom. V. 2); ' to glory* (Rom. v. 3) ; ' to joy* (Rom. v. 11); 
'to boast' (2 Cor. vii 14). 

Kpariu), ' to take* (Matt. ix. 25) ; ' to lay hold on' (Matt, 
xii. 11); 'to lay hands on* (Matt, xviii. 28); 'to hold fast* 
(Matt. xxvi. 48) ; ' to hold* (Matt, xxviii. 9) ; 'to keep* 
(Mark ix. 10); 'to retain* (John xx. 23); 'to obtain* (Acts 
xxvii. 13.) 

UapaKoXia), 'to comfort* (Matt. ii. 18); 'to beseech* 
(Matt. viii. 5); 'to desire* (Matt, xviii. 32); 'to pray* (Matt, 
xxvi. ^;^) ; ' to entreat* (Luke xv, 28) ; 'to exhort* (Acts ii. 
40) ; ' to call for* (Acts xxviii. 20). 

Let me once more observe, in leaving this part of the 
subject, that I would not for an instant imply that in all 
these places one and the same English word could have 
been employed, but only that the variety might have been 
much smaller than it is. 



CHAPTER V. 

ON SOME EEAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 

IF it is impossible, as was shown at the beginning of the 
last chapter, in every case to render one word in the 
original by one word and no more in the translation, 
equally impossible is it to render in every case different 
words in the original by different words in the translation. 
It will continually happen that one language possesses, and 
fixes in words, distinctions of which another takes no note. 
The more subtle-thoughted a people are, the finer and 
more numerous the differences will be which they will thus 
have seized, and to which they will have given permanence 
in words. What can an English translator do to express 
the distinction, oftentimes very significant, between avrjp 
and avOpwTTog ? — the honour which lies often in the first 
(Acts xiii. 16 ; xvii. 'ZO,), the slight which is intended to be 
conveyed in the second (Matt. xxvi. 72). At this point the 
Latin language, with * vir' and ' homo,' is a match for the 
Greek, but not so our own. In like manner the differences, 
oftentimes instructive, occasionally important, between hp6v 
and vaog, f5iog and $0)77, aXXog and erepog, viog and Kaivog, 
aXrjOrjQ and aXriOivog, (piXeoj and dyawaw, mostly disappear, 
and there seems no help but that they must disappear, in 
any English translation of the Greek Testament. Such facts 
remind us that language, divine gift to man as it is, yet 
working itself out through human faculties and powers, has 
cleaving to it a thousand marks of weakness and infirmity 
and limitation. 



ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 63 

To take an example of this, the obliteration of distinc- 
tions, which is quite unavoidable, or which could only have 
been avoided at the cost of greater losses in some other 
direction, and to deal with it somewhat more in detail — 
the distinction between "Ai^rjg, the under- world, the re- 
ceptacle of the departed, and ji^vva, the place of torment, 
quite disappears in our Version. They are both translated 
'heir, otSrjc being so rendered ten times, and ykwa 
twelve ; the only attempt to give a^rtg a word of its own, 
being at i Cor. xv. 55, where it is translated '^rave." The 
confusion of which this is the occasion is serious ; though 
how it could have been avoided, or how it would be 
possible now to get rid of it, I do not in the least perceive. 
It would not be possible to render a^rjg, wherever it occurs, 
by ' grave," thus leaving ' helF as the rendering of yievva 
only ; for see Matt. xi. 1^3 ; xvi. 18, the two first places of 
its occurrence, where this plainly would not suit. On the 
other hand, the popular sense links the name of ' helF so 
closely with the place of torment, that it would not answer 
to keep ' heir for ^8rjc, and to look out for some other 
rendering of ykvva, to say nothing of the difficulty or 
impossibility of finding one ; for certainly ' gehenna," which 
I have seen proposed, would not do. The French have, 
indeed, adopted the word, though it is only 'gene' to 
them; and Milton has once used it in poetry; but it cannot 
in any sense be said to be an English word. It is much to 
be regretted that ' hades' has never been thoroughly natu- 
ralized among us. The language wants the word, and in it 
the true solution of the difficulty might have been found. 

Yet freely granting all which this example illustrates, it 
is evident that the forces and capacities of a language should 
be stretched to the uttermost, th« riches of its synonyms 
thoroughly searched out ; and not till this is done, not till 



64 ON SOME EEAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 

its resources prove plainly inadequate to the task, ought 
translators to acquiesce in the disappearance from their 
copy, of distinctions which existed in the original from which 
that copy was made, or to count that, notwithstanding 
this disappearance, they have done all that lay in them to 
do. More assuredly might have been here accomplished 
than has by our Translators been attempted, as I will 
endeavour by a few examples to prove. 

Thus, one must always regret, and the regret has been 
often expressed, that in the Apocalypse our Translators 
should have rendered Ortpiov and Zioov by the same word 
' beast/ Both play important parts in the book ; both belong 
to its higher symbolism ; but to portions the most different. 
The Zioa or "living creatures,'' which stand before the 
throne, in which dwells the fulness of all creaturely life, as 
it gives praise and glory to God (iv. 6, 7, 8, 9 ; v. 6 ; vi. i ; 
and often) form part of the heavenly symbolism ; the Or^pm, 
the first beast and the second, which rise up, one from the 
bottomless pit (xi. 7), the other from the sea (xiii. i), of 
which the one makes war upon the two Witnesses, the other 
opens his mouth in blasphemies, these form part of the 
hellish symbolism. To confound these and those under a 
common designation, to call those 'beasts' and these 
* beasts,' would be an oversight, even granting the name to 
be suitable to both ; it is a more serious one, when the 
word used, bringing out, as this must, the predominance of 
the lower animal life, is applied to glorious creatures in the 
very court and presence of Heaven. The error is common 
to all the translations. That the Rheims should not have 
escaped it is strange ; for the Yulgate renders ^wa by 
' animal ia' ('animantia' would have been still better), and 
only dr}piov by ' bestia.' If ^wa had always been rendered 
"living creatures," this would have had the additional 



ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 65 

advantage of setting these symbols of tlie Apocalypse, even 
for the English reader, in an unmistakeable connexion with 
Ezek. i. 5, 13, 14, and often ; where "living creature'" is the 
rendering in our English Version of HTT, as ZCjov is in the 
Septuagint. 

In like manner, in the parable of the Marriage of the 
King's Son (Matt. xxii. i — 14), the dovXoi who summon 
the bidden guests (ver. 3, 4), and the ^lclkovol who in the end 
expel the unworthy intruder (ver. 13), should not have been 
confounded under the common name of ' servants.' A real 
and important distinction between the several actors in the 
parable is in this way obliterated. The SovXol are men, the 
ambassadors of Christ, those that invite their fellow-men to 
the blessings of the kingdom of heaven ; but the diaKovoi are 
angels, those that " stand by'' (Luke xix. 24), ready to fulfil 
the divine judgments, and whom we ever find the executors 
of these judgments in the day of Christ's appearing. They 
are as distinct from one another as the " servants of the 
householder," who in like manner are men, and the 
'reapers,' who are angels, in the parable of the Tares 
(Matt. xiii. 27, 30). In the Vulgate the distinction which 
we have lost, is preserved ; the ^ovXol are ' servi,' the 
^LttKovoL ' ministri ;' and all our early translations in like 
manner rendered the words severally by 'servants' and 
' ministers ;' the Eheims by ' servants' and ' waiters.' 

There is a very real distinction between aTnaria and 
aTreidua. It is often urged by our elder divines ; I remem- 
ber more than one passage in Jackson's works where it is 
so ; but it is not constantly observed by our Translators. 
'Awiaria is, I believe, always and rightly rendered, ' un- 
belief,' while a-n-dOeia is in most cases rendered, and rightly, 
' disobedience ;' but on two occasions (Heb. iv. 6, 1 1) it also is 
translated * unbelief.' In like manner, oTrt orfTv is properly 

F 



bb ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 

''to refuse belief," airuBuv "to refuse obedience;" but 
dTreiBaLv is often in our Translation allowed to run into the 
sense of clttlgtuv, as at John iii. 36 ; Acts xiv. 2 ; xix. 9 ; 
Rom. xi. 30 (the right translation in the margin) ; and yet, 
as I have said, the distinction is real ; airuBua or dis- 
obedience is the consequence of airidria or unbelief ; they 
are not identical with one another. 

Again, there was no possible reason why o-o^oc and 
^joovtjuoc should not have been kept asunder, and the real 
distinction which exists between them in the original 
maintained also in our Version. We possess 'wise' for 
aoc^iOQ, and 'prudent' for <j)p6vLiuL0Q. It is true that avverog 
has taken possession of ' prudent,' but might have better 
been rendered by ' understanding.' Our Translators have 
thrown away their advantage, rendering, I believe in every 
case, both o-o^oc and 0^ovt^oc by ' wise,' although in no 
single instance are the words interchangeable. The (ppoviiuog 
is one who dexterously adapts his means to his ends (Luke 
xvi. 8), the word expressing nothing in respect of the ends 
themselves, whether they are worthy or not ; the (T0(j)6g is 
one whose means and ends are alike worthy. God is o-o^oc 
(Jude 25) ; wicked men may be ^povLjxoi, while (ro^oi, ex- 
cept in the ao^ia tov Koafiov, they could never be. How 
much would have been gained at Luke xvi. 8, if ^povifHiyg 
had been rendered not ' wisely,' but ' prudently ;' how much 
needless offence would have been avoided ! 

The standing word which St. Paul uses to express the 
forgiveness of sins is a^^aig ajLLapnwv ; but on one remark- 
able occasion he changes his word, and instead of cl^^ctiq 
employs irap^GLg (Rom. iii. 25). Our Translators take 
no note of the very noticeable substitution, but render 
irapzaLv afiapTLiov, or rather here afiapTrijjLaTwv, " remission 
of sins," as everywhere else they have rendered the more 



ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 67 

usual phrase. But it was not for nothing that St. Paul 
used here quite another word. He is speaking of quite a 
different thing ; he is speaking not of the ' remission ' of 
sins, or the letting of them quite go, but of the 'praeter- 
mission' {iraQ^aiQ from iragi-nfii), the passing of them by 
on the part of God for a while, the temporary dissimulation 
upon his part, which found place under the old covenant, 
in consideration of the sacrifice which was one day to be. 
The passage is further obscured by the fact that our Transla- 
tors have rendered Sm rriv irdpsfjiv as though it had been 
Sta TTJg TrapldEwg — "foT the remission,"' that is, with a view 
to the remission, while the proper rendering of ^la, with an 
accusative, would of course have been " because of the re- 
mission,"' or rather " the pretermission/" or as Hammond 
proposes, " because of the passing by, of past sins."" What 
the Apostle would say is this : " There needed a signal 
manifestation of the righteousness of God on account 
of the long pretermission, or passing by, of sins in his in- 
finite forbearance, with no adequate expression of his 
righteous wrath against them, during all those ages which 
preceded the revelation of Christ : which manifestation of 
his righteousness at length found place, when He set forth 
no other and no less than his own Son to be the propitia- 
tory sacrifice for sin."" But the passage, as we have it 
now, cannot be said to yield this meaning. 

There are two occasions on which a multitude is miracu- 
lously fed by our Lord ; and it is not a little remarkable that 
on the first occasion in every narrative, and there are four 
records of the miracle, the word KOipivog is used of the 
baskets in which the fragments which remain are gathered 
up (Matt. xiv. 20 ; Mark vi. 43 ; Luke ix. 17 ; John vi. 13), 
while on occasion of the second miracle, in the two records 
which are all that we have of it, aTrvpig is used (Matt. xv. 

F 2 



68 ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 

0^"] ; Mark viii. 8) ; and in proof that this is not accidental 
see Matt. xvi. 9, lo ; Mark viii. 19, 20. The fact is a slight, 
yet not unimportant, testimony to the entire distinctness of 
the two miracles, and that we have not here, as some of the 
modern assailants of the historical accuracy of the Gospels 
assure us, two confused traditions of one and the same event. 
What the exact distinction between Kot^ivoq and (nrvpig is, 
may be hard to determine, and it may not be very easy to 
suggest what second word should have marked this distinc- 
tion ; yet I cannot but think that where, not merely the 
Evangelists in their narrative, but the Lord in his allusion 
to the event so distinctly marks a difference, we should 
have attempted to mark it also, as the "Vulgate by ' cophini' 
and ' spartse' has done. 

Again, our Translators obliterate, for the most part, the 
distinction between waig Qeov and vlog Q^ov, as applied to 
Christ. There are five passages in the New Testament in 
which the title ttoIq Qeov is given to the Son of God. In 
the first of these (Matt. xii. 18) they have rendered iratg 
by ' servant ;' and they would have done well if they had 
abode by this in the other four. These all occur in the 
Acts, and in every one of them the notion of ' servant ' is 
abandoned, and ^ son" (Acts iii. 13, 26), or 'child' (Acts iv. 
27, 30), introduced. I am persuaded that in this they were 
in error. Uaig Oeov might be rendered " servant of God,'" 
and I am persuaded that it ought. It might be, for it needs 
not to say waXg is continually used like the Latin ' puer ' in 
the sense of servant, and in the LXX. TraTc Ofou as the 
" servant of God." David calls himself so no less than seven 
times in 2 Sam. vii. ; cf. Luke i. 69 ; Acts iv. 25 ; Job i. 8 ; 
Ps. xix. li, 14. But not merely it might have been thus 
rendered ; it also should have been, as these reasons con- 
vince me : — Every student of prophecy must have noticed 



ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 69 

how mucli there is in Isaiah prophesying of Christ under 
the aspect of "the servant of the Lord;" "Israel my 
servant;" " my servant whom I uphold f (Isai. xlii. i — 7 ; 
xlix. I — 12 ; lii. 13 ; liii. 12). I say, prophesying of Christ ; 
for I dismiss, as a baseless dream of those who a priori are 
determined that there are, and therefore shall be, no prophe- 
cies in Scripture, the notion that " the servant of Jehovah" 
in Isaiah is Israel according to the flesh, or Isaiah himself, 
or the body of the prophets collectively considered, or any 
other except Christ Himself But it is quite certain from 
the inner harmonies of the Old Testament and the New, 
that wherever there is a large group of prophecies in the 
Old, there is some allusion to them in the New. Unless, 
however, we render iraXg Qaov by " servant of God "' in the 
places where that phrase occurs in the New, there will be 
no allusion throughout it all to that group of prophecies 
which designate the Messiah as the servant of Jehovah, 
who learned obedience by the things which He suffered. 1 
cannot doubt, and, as far as I know, this is the conclusion 
of all who have considered the subject, that Tralg Qeov 
should be rendered " servant of God,'" as often as in the 
New Testament it is used of Christ. His sonship will 
remain sufficiently declared in innumerable other passages. 
Something of precision and beauty is lost at John x. 16, 
by rendering avXri and ttoi^vi] both by * fold :' " And other 
sheep I have, which are not of this fold (auXijc); these 
also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there 
shaU be one fold (7roi/xpr/)j and one shepherd.'" It is re- 
markable that in the Yulgate there is the same obhtera- 
tion of the distinction between the two words, ^ ovile" 
standing for both. Substitute 'flock' for 'fold' on the 
second occasion of its occurring (this was Tyndale's ren- 
dering, which we should not have forsaken), and it wHl be. 



70 ON SOME KEAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 

at once felt how much the verse will gain. The Jew and 
the Gentile are the two ' folds,' which Christ, the Good 
Shepherd, will gather into a single ' flock/ 

As a farther exa^mple take John xvii. 12 : "While I was 
with them in the world, I kept them in thy name. Those 
that Thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost." 
It is not a great matter, yet who would not gather from 
this ' kept' recurring twice in this verse, that there must be 
also in the original some word of the like recurrence ? Yet 
it is not so; the first 'kept' is erripovv, and the second 
EfpvXa^a : nor are rrjpdv and (pvXadcreLv here such mere 
synonyms, that the distinction between them may be 
effaced without loss. The first is ' servare,' or better, ' con- 
servare,' the second ' custodire :' and the first, the keeping 
or preserving, is the consequence of the second, the guard- 
ing. What the Lord would say is : "I so guarded, so pro- 
tected (f^uXaSa), those whom Thou hast given me, that I 
kept and preserved them (this the rriprimg) unto the present 
day." Thus Lampe : " Trtpdv est generalius, vitseque novae 
finalem conservationem potest exprimere ; (pvXacFcreiv vero 
specialius mediorum prgestationem, per quae finis ille obti- 
netur." He quotes excellently to the point, Prov. xix. 6 : 

Before leaving this branch of the subject, I will give one 
or two examples more of the way in which a single word 
in the English does duty for many in the Greek. Thus, 
take the words, ' thought' and '■ think.' The Bibhcal psycho- 
logy is anyhow a subject encumbered with most serious 
perplexities. He finds it so, and often sees his way but 
obscurely, who has all the helps which the most accu- 
rate observation and comparison of the terms actually 
used by the sacred writers will afford. Of course none but 
the student of the original document can have these helps 



ON SOME KEAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 71 

in their fulness ; at the same time it scarcely needed that 
'thought' should be employed as the rendering alike of 
lvBvfir)(TLQ (Matt. ix. 4), SiaXoyL(Tju6g (Matt. XV. 19), ^lavovjua 
(Luke xi. 17), eirivoia (Acts viii. 22), XoyKT/uiog (Rom. ii. 15), 
and v6vfj.a (2 Cor. x. 5).; or that the verb "to think" 
should in the passages which follow be the one English 
representative of a still wider circle of words, of SokIw 
(Matt. iii. 9), vofiiZd) (Matt. v. 17), IvQvfi^ofxai (Matt. ix. 4), 
^laXoyiZoiuaL (Luke xii. 17), ^lavSvfiiofjiaL (Acts x. 19), 
vTTOvoioj (Acts xiii. 25), Jiyiofxm (Acts xxvi. 2), Kptvw 
(Acts xxvi. 8), <ppovi(t) (Rom. xii. 3), XoyiZoimaL (2 Cor. 
iiL 5), void) (Ephes. iii. 20), oLOjuai (Jam. i. 7). 

One example more. The verb 'to trouble' is a very 
favourite one with our Translators. There are no less than 
ten Greek words or phrases, which it is employed by them 
to render ; these namely : kottovq iraplx^ (Matt. xxvi. 10), 
(TKvWu) (Mark v. ^^), ^larapaddii) (Luke i. 29), Tvp(5dZ(*) 
(Luke X. 41), Trap£voxXi(o (Acts xv. 19), Oopvpiojuai (Acts 
XX. 10), TapaaGd) (Gal. i. 7)? avaaTaTOix) (Gal. V. 1 2), 0Xtj3a) 
(2 Thess. i. 6), IvoxXew (Heb. xii. 15). If we add to these 
iKTapa<T(T(i) "exceedingly to trouble'' (Actsxvi. 20), Opoeofiai 
" to be troubled" (Matt. xxiv. 6) ; the word will do duty 
for no fewer than twelve Greek words. Now, the English 
language may not be so rich in synonyms as the Greek ; 
but with ' vex,' ' harass,' ' disturb,' ' distress,' ' afflict,' ' dis- 
quiet,' ' unsettle,' ' burden,' 'terrify;' almost everyone of 
which would in one of the above places or other seem to 
me more appropriate than the word actually employed, I 
cannot admit that the poverty or limited resources of our 
language left no choice here, but to efface all the distinc- 
tions between these words, as by the employment of 
' trouble' for them all has, in these cases at least, been done. 



CHAPTER YI. 

ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, OR PLACED 
IN THE MARGIN. 

OCCASIONALLY, but rarely, our Translators dismiss 
a better rendering, which was in one or more of the 
earlier versions, and replace it with a worse. It may be 
said of their Version, in regard of those which went before, 
that it occupies very much the place which the Yulgate did 
in regard of the Latin versions preceding. In the whole, 
an immense improvement, while yet in some minor details 
they are more accurate than it. This is so in the passages 
which follow. 

Matt, xxviii. 14. — "And if this come to the governor s 
ears, we will persuade him, and secure you." The Geneva 
version, but that alone among the previous ones, had given 
the passage rightly : " And if this come before the governor 
(/cat eav aKOvaBi^ tovto liri tov riy^iJiovog) We will pacify 
him, and save you harmless.'' The words of the original 
have reference to a judicial hearing of the matter before 
the governor (" si res apud ilium judicem agatur,'' Eras- 
mus), and not to the possibility of its reaching his ears 
by hearsay, but this our Translation fails to express. In 
TTEio-o/xtv, I may observe, lies a euphemism by no means 
rare in Hellenistic Greek (see Krebs, Ohss. e Josepho, in 
loco) : " We will take effectual means to persuade him ;' 
as, knowing the covetous greedy character of the man, 
they were able confidently to promise. 

Mark xi. 17. — "Is it not written, my house shall be 



ON SOME BETTER RENDEEINGS FORSAKEN. 73 

called of all nations the house of prayer ? but ye have 
made it a den of thieves." In Tyndale's version, in 
Cranmer's and the Geneva : " My house shall be called the 
house of prayer unto all nations ; but ye, &c/' and rightly. 
There is no difficulty whatever in giving Trao-t rote iBviai, 
a dative rather than an ablative sense ; while thus the 
passage is brought into exact agreement with that in 
Isaiah, to which Christ, in his "it is written" refers, 
namely, IsaL Ivi. 7 ; and moreover, the point of his words 
is preserved, which the present translation misses. Our 
Lord's indignation was aroused in part at the profana- 
tion of the holy precincts of his Father's house ; but in part, 
also, by the fact that, the scene of this profanation being 
the Court of the Gentiles, the Jews have thus mana.ged to 
testify their contempt for them, and for their share in the 
blessings of the Covenant. Those parts of the temple 
which were exclusively their own, the Court of the Priests, 
and the Court of Israelites, they had kept clear of these 
buyers and sellers ; but that part assigned to the Gentile 
worshippers, the o-cjSo/zsvot tov Otov, they were little con- 
cerned about the profanation to which it was exposed, per- 
haps pleased with it rather. In a righteous indignation 
Christ quotes the words of the prophet, which they had 
done all that in them lay to defeat : " My house shall be 
called the house of prayer unto all nations :" all which 
intention on his part in the citation of the prophecy our 
Version fails to preserve. Mede^ ascribes to the influence 
of Beza this alteration, which is certainly one for the worse. 
Ephes. iv. 18. — "Because of the blindness of their 
hearts."" The Geneva version had given this rightly: 
" because of the hardness of their heart f which better 



Works, p. 45. 



74 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, 

rendering our Translators forsake, being content to place it 
in the margin. But there can be no doubt that TnLpwmg is 
from the substantive ircopog, a porous kind of stone, and 
from irttjpow, to become callous, hard, or stony (Mark 
vi. 52 ; John xii.40 ; Rom. xi. 7 ; 2 Cor. iii. 14) ; not from 
TTwpoc;, blind. How much better, too, this agrees with what 
follows — "who being past feeling" (that is, having through 
their hardness or callousness of heart, arrived at a con- 
dition of miserable avaiadriaLa} "have given themselves 
over to work all uncleanness with greediness." I may- 
observe that at Rom. xi. 7, they have in like manner put 
' blinded' in the text, and ' hardened,* the correct rendering 
of lirwpwOritTav, in the margin ; while at 2 Cor. iii. 16, where 
they translate aXX iirwpwQy] ra voijfxaTa avrwvj " but their 
minds were blinded," the correcter is not even offered as 
an alternative rendering. Wiclif and the Rheims, which 
both depend on the Vulgate ("sed ohtusi sunt sensus 
eorum'") are here the only correct versions. 

I Thess. V. 22. — "Abstain from all appearance of 
eviL'* An injurious translation of the words, dirb wavrbg 
uSovg 7rovr}pov airex^GOe, and a going back from the right 
translation, "Abstain from all kind of evil,'' which the 
Geneva version had. It is from the reality of evil, and 
eldog here means this (see a good note in Hammond), not 
from the appearance, which God's Word elsewhere com- 
mands us to abstain ; nor does it here command anything 
else. Indeed there are times when so far from abstaining 
from all appearance of evil, it will be a part of Christian 
courage not to abstain from such. It was an " appear- 
ance of evir' in the eyes of the Pharisees, when our Lord 
healed on the Sabbath, or showed himself a friend of pub- 
licans and sinners ; but Christ did not therefore abstain 
from this or from that. How many ^'appearances of 



OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 75 

evil/' which he might have abstained from, yet did not, 
must St. Paul's own conversation have presented in the eyes 
of the zealots for the ceremonial law. I was once incHned 
to think that our Translators used * appearance' here as 
we might now use ' form,' and that we therefore had here 
an obsolete, not an inaccurate, rendering ; but I can find no 
authority for thi^ use of the word. 

Heb. xi. 13. — "These all died in faith; not having re- 
ceived the promises; but having seen them afar off, 
and were persuaded of them, and embraced them." 
But with all respect be it said, this " embracing the pro- 
mises" was the very thing which the worthies of the Old 
Testament did not do; and which the sacred writer is 
urging throughout that they did not do, who only saw 
them from afar, as things distant and not near. Our present 
rendering is an unfortunate going back from Tyndale's and 
Cranmer's, " saluted them," from Wiclif's, " greeted them." 
The beautiful image of mariners homeward-bound, who 
recognize from afar the promontories and well-known 
features of a beloved land, and 'greet' or 'salute' these 
from a distance, is lost to us. Estius : " Chrysostomus dictum 
putat ex metaphora navigantium qui ex longinquo pro- 
spiciunt civitates desideratas, quas antequam ingrediantur 
et inhabitent, salutatione prseveniunt." Of. Yirgil, ^n. 

iii. 524:— 

Italiam Iseto socii clamore salutant. 

In other respects our Version is unsatisfactory. The words, 
"and were persuaded of them," have no right to a place in 
the text ; while the " afar off" (iroppdjOev) belongs not to 
the seeing alone, but to the saluting as well. How beau- 
tifully the verse would read thus amended : " These all died 
in faith; not having received the promises, but having 
seen and saluted them from afar." We have exactly such 



76 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, 

a salutation from afar in the words of the dying Jacob : " I 
have waited for thy salvation, Lord" (Gen. xlix. i8). 

I Pet. i. 17. — "And liye call on the Father^ who without 
respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, 
pass the time of your sojourning here in fear." Here, too, 
it must be confessed, that we have left a better, and chosen 
a worse rendering. The Geneva had it,' "xind if ye call 
Him Father^ who without respect of persons, &c.," and 
this, and this only, is the meaning which the words of the 
original, /cat tl Haripa iTriKuXdcrOe tov aTTpo(jix)Tro\r\TrTii)q 
KpLvovra, K.T.\.j will bear. 

It must not be supposed from, what has been here ad- 
duced that our Translators did not exercise a very careful 
revision of the translations preceding. In every page of 
their work there is evidence that they did so. Very often 
our Authorized Version is the first that has seized the true 
meaning of a passage. It would be easy for me to bring 
forward many passages in proof, only that my task is here, 
passing over the hundred excellencies, to fasten rather on 
the single fault ; and I must therefore content myself with 
one or two illustrations of this. Thus at Heb. iv. i, none 
of the preceding versions, neither our own, nor the Rheims, 
had correctly given KaraXeiTroiutvrig iTrayyeXiag : they all 
translate it " forsaking the promise," or something similar, 
instead of, as we have rightly done, " a promise being 
left us." Again, at Acts xii. 19, the technical meaning of 
diraxOrivaij that it signifies to be led away to execution, is 
wholly missed by Tyndale (" he examined the keepers and 
commanded to depart"), by Cranmer and the Kheims ; it 
is only partially seized by the Geneva version, but perfectly 
by our Translators. Far more important than this is the 
clear recognition of the personality of the Word in the 
prologue of St. John by our Translators : " All things were 



OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 77 

made by Him ;" " In Him was life" (John i. 3, 4) ; while in 
all our preceding versions it is read, "All things were 
made by it," and so on. Our Version is the first which 
gives GvvakLtioii^voQ (Acts i. 4) rightly. 

Improvements also are very frequent in single words and 
phrases, even where those which were displaced were not 
absolutely incorrect; thus how much better "earnest ex- 
pectation" (Rom. viii. 19) than "fervent desire," as a ren- 
dering of airoKapa^oKia ; * tattlers' instead of ' triflers,' as a 
rendering of (pXvapoi (i Tim. v. 13) ; indeed the latter could 
hardly be said to be correct.^ " TT/w^ec^ sepulchres" is an 
improvement upon "painted sepulcres" {ra^oL KEKoviafjiivoiy 
Matt, xxiii. 27), which all our preceding versions had. 
" Without distraction" (i Cor. vii. 35) is a far better ren- 
dering of aTr£pL(nracrT(i)g than "without separation" It 
was slovenly to introduce * Candy/ the modern name of 
Crete, which all the Anglican versions before our own had 
done at Acts xxvii. 7, 12, 21 ; but which in ours is removed. 
"Profane person" is a singularly successful rendering of 
jSl/BrjXoc (Heb. xii. 16), while yet none of our preceding 
versions had lighted upon it ; at the same time it is pos- 
sible that we ourselves owe it to the Eheims, where it first 
appears. 

But, further, our Translators sometimes put a better 
rendering in the margin, and retain a worse in the text. 
It may perhaps be urged that here at least they offer the 
better to the reader's choice. But practically this cannot 
be said to be the case. For, in the first place, the propor- 



* Unless, indeed, * trifler' once meant " utterer of trifles," and thus 

* tattler ;' which may perhaps be, as I observe in the fragment of a 
Nominale published by Wright, National Antiquities, vol. i. p. 216, 

* nugigerulus' given as the Latin equivalent of * trifler.' 



78 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, 

tion of our Bibles is very small which are printed with 
these marginal variations, as compared with those in which 
they are suppressed. They are thus brought under the 
notice of very few among the readers of Scripture, not to 
say that by these they are very rarely referred to. How 
many, for instance, among these even know of the exist- 
ence of a variation so important as that at John iii. 3 ? 
And even if they do refer, they commonly attach com- 
paratively little authority, to them. They acquiesce for the 
most part, and naturally acquiesce, in the verdict of the 
Translators about them ; who, by placing them in the 
margin, and not in the text, evidently declare that they 
consider them the less probable renderings. Then too, of 
course, they are never heard in the public services of the 
Church, which must always be a chief source of the popular 
knowledge of Scripture. It is impossible, then, to attach 
to a right interpretation in the margin any serious value, 
as redressing an erroneous or imperfect one in the text. 
Marginal variations are quite without influence as modify- 
ing the view which the body of English readers take of 
any passages in the English Bible ; and this leads me to 
observe that the suggestion which has been sometimes 
made of a large addition to these, as a middle way and 
compromise between leaving our Version as it is, and in- 
troducing actual changes into its text, does not seem to me 
to contain any real solution of our difficulties, not to say 
that it would be attended with many and most serious 
objections. 

But to return. The following are passages in which I 
cannot doubt that we have placed the better rendering in 
the margin, the worse in the text. 

Matt. V. 21. — "Ye have heard that it was said hy them 
of old time." This rendering of lpp{]Br\ roXg apx«to^C 



OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 79 

is grammatically defensible, while yet there can be no reason- 
able doubt that " to the'/n of old time/' which was in all the 
preceding versions, but which our Translators have dis- 
missed to the margin, ought to resume its place in the 
text. 

Matt. ix. 36. — " They fainted and were scattered abroad, 
as sheep having no shepherd.'"' But "scattered abroad'" 
does not exactly express IppLfxfxivoi, any more than does the 
* zerstreut ' of Luther's version. It is not their dispersion 
one from another, but their prostration in themselves, which 
is intended. The IppijUfiivoL are the ' prostrati,' ' temere pro- 
jecti;' those that have cast themselves along for very 
weariness, unable to travel any farther. The Vulgate had 
it rightl}^, 'jacentes,' which Wiclif follows, "lying down." 
Our present rendering dates as far back as Tyndale, and was 
retained in the subsequent versions; while the correct trans- 
lation is relegated to the margin. 

Matt. X. 16. — "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and 
harmless as doves." Wiclif, following the Vulgate, had 
" simple SiS doves." 'Simple' our Translators have dismissed 
to the margin ; they ought to have kept it in the text, as 
rightly they have done at Rom. xvi. 19. The rendering of 
axipaiog by ' harmless' here and at Phil. ii. 15, grows out of 
wrong etymology, as though it were from d and Kepag, one 
who had no horn with which to push or otherwise hurt. 
Thus Bengel, who falls in with this error, glosses here : "Sine 
cornii, ungula, dente, aculeo." But this "without horn" 
would be aKeparog ; while the true derivation of uKipaiog, 
it needs hardly be said, is from a and Kepavvvfii, un mingled, 
sincere, and thus single, guileless, simple, without all folds. 
How much finer the antithesis in this way becomes. " Be 
ye therefore wise (' prudent ' would be better) as serpents, 
and simple as doves" — having care, that is, that this pru- 



80 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, 

dence of yours do not degenerate into artifice and guile ; 
letting tlie columbine simplicity go hand in hand with the 
serpentine prudence. The exact parallel will then be 
I Cor. xiv. 20. 

Mark vi. i^o. — " For Herod feared John, knowing that he 
was a just man and an holy, and observed him/' This 
may be after Erasmus, who renders koX avvETrjpH avrov, " et 
magni eum faciebat ;"' so too Grotius and others. Now it is 
undoubtedly true thato-uvrjjjOEtv to. St<caia(Polybius,iv.6o, lo) 
would be rightly translated " to observe things righteous ;'' 
but here it is not things, but a person, and no such rendering 
is admissible. Translate rather, as in our margin, "kept 
him or saved him,'"' that is, from the malice of Herodias ; 
she laid plots for the Baptist's life, but up to this time 
Herod (rvvtr-npsi, sheltered or preserved, him (" custodiebat 
eum,'' the Yulgate rightly), so that her malice could not 
reach him. See Hammond, in loco. It will at once be 
evident in how much stricter logical sequence the statement 
of the Evangehst will follow, if this rendering of the pas- 
sage is admitted. 

Mark vii. 4. — ' Tables/ This cannot be correct : our 
Translators have put * beds' in the margin, against which 
rendering of kXlvCjv nothing can be urged, except that the 
context points clearly here to these in a special aspect, 
namely, to the * benches' or ' couches' on which the Jews 
reclined at their meals. 

Luke xvii. 21. — " The kingdom of heaven is within you/' 
Doubtless, the words Ivtoq vfiCJv may mean this ; but how 
could the Lord address this language to the Pharisees ? 
A very different kingdom from the kingdom of heaven was 
within them, not to say that this whole language of the 
kingdom of heaven being within men, rather than men 
being within the kingdom of heaven, is, as one has justly 



OE PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 81 

observed, modern. The marginal reading, " among you/* 
should have been the textual. " He in whom the whole 
kingdom of heaven is shut up as in a germ, and from whom 
it will unfold itself, stands in your midst." 

Col. ii. 1 8. — " Let no man beguile you of your revjard." 
It is evident that this KaTa(3pa(3Evh(i) vfiag seriously per- 
plexed our early translators, and indeed others besides them. 
Thus in the earlier Italic we find, " vos superet ;" in the 
Vulgate, "vos decipiat;" Tyndale translates, "make you 
shoot at a wrong mark )' the Geneva, " bear rule over you " 
while our Translators have proposed as an alternative read- 
ing to that which they admit into the text, "judge against 
you.^* The objection to this rendering, which marks more 
insight into the true character of the word than any which 
went before, is that it is too obscure, and does not sufficiently 
tell its own story. The meaning of fipa^tvuv is, to adjudge 
a reward ; of KaTaf3pa(d£veLv, out of a hostile mind (this 
is implied in the Kara), to adjudge it away from a person, 
with the subaudition that this is the person to whom it is 
justly due. Jerome {ad Algas. Qu. lo) does not quite seize 
the meaning ; for he regards the KarajSpajdevtov as the 
competitor who unjustly bears away, not the judge who 
unjustly ascribes, the reward : otherwise his explanation is 
good : " Nemo adversum vos bravium accipiat : hoc enim 
Grsece dicitur Karaj3/)aj3fv£rw, quum quis in certamine posi- 
tus, iniquitate agonothetse, vel insidiis magistrorum, j3|0a- 
(delov et palmam sibi debitam perdit.'^ It is impossible for 
any English word to express the fulness of allusion con- 
tained in the original Greek ; while long circumlocutions, 
which should turn the version in fact into a commentary, 
are clearly inadmissible. If "judge against you** is too 
obscure, and too little of an English idiom, and, "judge 
away the reward from you,** would underlie the second 

G 



82 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, 

at least of these objections, the substitution of ' deprive' 
for ' beguile' (which last has certainly no claim to stand), 
might, in case of a revision, be desirable. 

I Thess. iv. 6. — " Let no man go beyond or defraud his 
brother in any matter." But t(o here is not = rtij = rivij 
which would alone justify the rendering of ev rtjj TrpayiiLaTi, 
" in any matter." A more correct translation is in the 
margin, namely, " in the matter,'' that is, " in this matter," 
being the matter with which the Apostle at the moment 
has to do. The difference may not seem very important, 
but, indeed, the whole sense of the passage turns on this 
word ; and, as we translate in one way or the other, we 
determine for ourselves whether it is a warning against 
over-reaching our neighbour, and a too shrewd dealing wdth 
him in the business transactions of life, strangely finding 
place in the midst of warnings against uncleanness and a 
libertine freedom in the relation of the sexes ; or whether 
an unbroken warning against this is continued through all 
these verses (3 — 9). I cannot doubt that the latter is the 
correct view, that to Trpajina is an euphemism, and that our 
marginal version is the right one ; the Apostle warning his 
Thessalonian converts that none, in a worse TrXaovt^ia than 
that which makes one man covet his neighbour's goods, over- 
step the limits and fences by which God has hedged round 
and separated from him his brother's wife. See Bengel, in 
loco. Accepting this view of the passage, ' overreach,' which 
the margin suggests instead of ' defraud/ as the rendering 
of ttXeov&ktuv, would also be an undoubted improvement. 

I Tim. vi. 5. — " Supposing that gain is godliness." It 
is difficult to connect any meaning whatever with this lan- 
guage. But Coverdale, and he alone of our translators, 
deals with these words, vo/uiZovTeg iropianov aivat rrjv evai- 
j3etav, rightly, — " which think that godliness is lucre" i.e.. 



OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 83 

a means of gain. The want of a thorough mastery of the 
Greek article and its use, left it possible here to go back 
from a right rendering once attained. 

Heb. V. 1. — " Who can have compassion on the ignorant, 
and on them that are out of the way, for that he himself 
also is compassed with infirmity/' But is, it may fairly be 
asked, "who can have compassion,'' the happiest rendering 
of juerpioTraOelv dwa/m^voQ ? and ought /LLSTpioTraOeiv to be 
thus taken as entirely synonymous with arvjuTraOeTv ? The 
words, fiETpioTraOEiv, juLETpLowaOeLa, belong to the terminology 
of the later schools of Greek philosophy, and were formed 
to express that moderate amount of emotion (the fiErpidyg 
Tracrxetv), which the Peripatetics and others acknowledged 
as becoming a wise and good man, contrasted with the 
wKaBua, or absolute indolency, which the Stoics required. 
It seems to me that the Apostle would say that the high 
priest taken from among men, out of a sense of his own 
weakness and infirmity was in a condition to estimate 
mildly and moderately, and not transported with indig- 
nation, the sins and errors of his brethren ; and it is this 
view of the passage which is correctly expressed in the 
margiQ : " who can reasonably hear with the ignorant, &c." 

Heb. ix. 23. — "It was therefore necessary that the patterns 
of things in the heavens should be purified with these, but 
the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than 
these." The employment of * patterns' introduces some 
confusion here, and is not justified by the use of the word 
in the time of our Translators, any more than in our own. 
It is, of course, quite true that viro^siyfua may mean, and, 
indeed, often does mean, 'pattern' or * exemplar' (John 
xiii. 15). But here, as at viii. 5 (ywo^eLyjULa kol (tkio), it 
can only mean the copy drawn from this exemplar. The 
heavenly thiQgs are themselves "the patterns" or archetypes, 

g2 



84 ON SOME BETTER EENDERINGS FORSAKEN. 

the ' Urbilden ;' the earthly, the Levitical tabernacle with 
its priests and sacrifices, are the copies, the similitudes, the 
' Abbilden,' which, as such, are partakers not of a real but a 
typical purification. This is indeed the very point which 
the Apostle is urging, and his whole antithesis is confused 
by calling the earthly things themselves "the patterns." 
The earlier translators, Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Geneva, 
had ' similitudes,' which was correct, though it seems to me 
that * copies' would be preferable.^ 

1 Pet. iii. 1 2. — " Hasting unto the coming of the day of 
God."' The Vulgate had in like manner rendered the 
(jTT^v^ovT&g rrjv Trapovaiav/' properantes in adventum ;" and 
this use of (nr^v^eLv may be abundantly justified, although 
" hasting toward the coming" seems to me to express more 
accurately what our Translators probably intended, and 
what the word allows. This will then be pretty nearly 
De Wette's * ersehnend.' Yet the marginal version, " hasting 
the coming" (" accelerantes adventum," Erasmus), seems 
better. The faithful, that is, shall seek to cause the day of 
the Lord to come the more quickly by helping to fulfil 
those conditions, without which it cannot come — ^that day 
being no day inexorably fixed, but one, the arrival of which 
it is free to the Church to help and hasten on by faith and 
by prayer, and through a more rapid accomplishing of the 
number of the elect. 



* It is familiarly known to all students of English that * pattern' is 
originally only another spelling of 'patron' (the client imitates his 
patron ; the copy takes after its pattern), however they may have now 
separated off into two words. But it is interesting to notice the word 
when as yet this separation of one into two had not uttered itself in 
different orthography. We do this Heb. viii. 5 (Geneva Version): 
" which priestes serve unto i\\epatrGne and shadow of heavenly things." 



CHAPTER VII. 

ON SOME EEROES OF GREEK GRAMMAR IN OUR VERSION. 

T HAVE already spoken of the English Grammar of our 
-*- Translators ; but the Oreek Grammar is also occasionally 
at fault. The most recurring blemishes which have been 
noted here, are these, i. A failing to give due heed to the 
presence or absence of the article ; they omit it sometimes, 
when it is present in their original, and when, according to 
the rules of the language, it ought to be preserved in the 
translation ; they insert it, when it is absent there, and has 
no claim to have found admission from them. 3. A certain 
laxity in the rendering of prepositions ; for example, Iv is 
rendered as if it was ug, and vice versa; the different forces 
of Sm, as it governs a genitive or an accusative, are disre- 
garded, with other inaccuracies of the same kind. 3. Tenses 
are not always accurately discriminated ; aorists are dealt 
with as perfects, perfects as aorists ; the force of the im- 
perfect is not always given. Moods, too, and voices are 
occasionally confounded. 4. Other grammatical lapses, 
which cannot be included in any of these divisions, are 
noticeable. These, however,^ are the most serious and most 
recurring. I will give examples of them all. 

I. In regard of the Greek article our Translators err both 
in excess and defect, but offcenest in the latter. They omit 
it, and sometimes not without serious loss, in passages 
where it ought to find place. Such a passage is Rev. Ivii. 
14 : " These are they which came out of great tribulation/' 



86 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR 

Rather, "out of the great tribulation'' (Ik. Tr\q 6\i\pawg rijc 
/ifyaXrjc). The leaving out of the article, so emphatically 
repeated, causes us to miss the connexion between this pas- 
sage and Matt. xxiv. 22, 29; Dan. xii. i. It is the character 
of the Apocalypse, the crowning book of the Canon, that it 
abounds with allusions to preceding Scriptures ; and, nume- 
rous as are those that appear on the surface, those which lie 
a little below the surface are more numerous still. Thus 
there can be no doubt that allusion is here to " the great 
tribulation'' (the same phrase, OXiipig /uLeyaXr}) of the last 
days, the birth-pangs of the new creation, which ourLord 
in his prophecy from the Mount had foretold. 

Heb. xi. 10. — " He looked for a city which hath founda- 
tions." Not so ; the language is singularly emphatic. 
" He looked for the city which hath the foundations" (rrjv 
Tovg OsiuLeXLovg 'ix^vaav iroXiv), that is, the well known and 
often alluded to, foundations — in other words, he looked 
for the New Jerusalem, of which it had been already said, 
" Her foundations are in the holy mountains" (Ps. Ixxxvii. 
I ; cf. Isai. xxviii. 16) ; even as in the Apocalypse great 
things are spoken of these glorious foundations of the 
Heavenly City (Rev. xxi. 14, 19, 20). Let me here 
observe that those expositors seem to me to be wholly 
astray who make the Apostle to say that Abraham looked 
forward to a period when the nomad life which he was 
now leading should cease, and his descendants be esta- 
blished in a well-ordered city, the earthly Jerusalem. He 
may, indeed, have looked on to that as a pledge of better 
things to come ; but never to that as "the City having the 
foundations ;" nor do I suppose for an instant that our 
Translators at all intended this ; but still, if they had re- 
produced the force of the article, they would, in giving 
the passage its true emphasis, have rendered such a 



IN OUR VERSION. 87 

misapprehension on the part of their readers well-nigh 
impossible. 

John iii. lo. — " Art thou a teacher of Israel, and knowest 
not these things?" Middleton may perhaps make too 
much of 6 StSaor/caXoc here, as though it singled out Nico- 
demus from among all the Jewish doctors as the one super- 
eminent. Yet it is equally incorrect to deny it all force. 
It is, as Erasmus gives it, " ille magister ;"" " Art thou that 
teacher, that famed teacher of Israel, and yet art ignorant 
of these things V and the question loses an emphasis, which 
I cannot but believe, with Winer and many more, it was 
intended to have, by the obliteration in our Version of the 
force of the article. 

In other passages it is plain that a more complete 
mastery of the use of the article would have modified the 
rendering of a passage which our Translators have given. 
It would have done so, I am persuaded, at i Tim. vi. 2 : 
"And they that have believing masters, let them not 
despise them, because they are brethren, but rather do 
them service, because they are faithful and beloved, 'par- 
takers of the benefit" (on Tnaroi ei<n koX aya-TrriTOi, ol 
rriQ evspyemag avTLkafxPtavofxevoL). It is clear that for 
them " partakers of the benefit" is but a further unfolding 
of " faithful and beloved," the ' benefit' being the grace and 
gift of eternal life, common to master and slave alike. 
But so the article in this last clause has not its rights, and 
the only correct translation of the passage will make intJToi 
Kai ayaTrr\TOL the predicate, and ol tyiq svepyecriag dvriXaia- 
Pavofiivoi the subject. St. Paul reminds the slaves that 
they shall serve believing masters the more cheerfully out 
of the consideration that they do not bestow their service 
on unconverted unthankful lords, but rather that they who 
are " partakers of the benefit," that is, the benefit of their 



88 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR 

service, they to whom this service is rendered, are brethren 
in Christ. The Yulgate rightly : " quia fideles siint et dilecti, 
qui beneficiiparticipes sunt/' It needs only to insert the words 
" who are'' before ' partakers,' to make our Version correct. 
But more important than in any of these passages, as 
rendering serious doctrinal misunderstandings possible, is 
the neglect of the article at Rom. v. 15, 1 7. In place of any 
observations of my own, I will here quote Bentley's criticism 
on our Version. Having found fault with the rendering of 
01 iroWoi, Rom. xii. 5, he proceeds : " This will enable us 
to clear up another place of much greater consequence, 
Rom. V. ; where after the Apostle had said, ver. 12, ' that by 
one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and 
so death passed U2^on all men (elg navrag dvOpwirovg), for 
that all have sinned,' in the reddition of this sentence, 
ver. 15, he says, ' for if through the offence of one (rov 
ivog) many (pi ttoXXoi) be dead' (so our Translators) 'much 
more the grace of God by one man (rov ivog) Jesus Christ 
hath abounded unto many' (elg rovg iroWovg). Now who 
would not wish that they had kept the articles in the 
version which they saw in the original ? * If through the 
offence of the one' (that is Adam) ' the m^any have died, 
much more the grace of God by the one man hath abounded 
unto the "iuany/ By this accurate version some hurtful 
mistakes about partial redemption and absolute reprobation 
had been happily prevented. Our English readers had 
then seen, what several of the Fathers saw and testified, 
that ol iroXXoi, the many, in an antithesis to the one, are 
equivalent to iravreg, all, in ver. 12, and comprehend the 
whole multitude, the entire species of mankind, exclusive 
only of the one. So, again, ver. 18 and 19 of the same 
chapter, our Translators have repeated the like mistake ; 
where> when the Apostle had said ' that as the offence of 



IN OUR VERSION. 89 

one was ujpon all men {dg Trdvrag dvOptoirovg) to condem- 
nation, so the righteousness of one was upon all men to 
justification ; for/ adds he^ ' as by the one man's {rov ivbg) 
disobedience the mxiny (pi woXXoi) were made sinners ; so 
by the obedience of the one (rov hog) the many (ol 
ttoXXol) shall be made righteous/ By this version the 
reader is admonished and guided to remark that the many, 
in ver. 19, are the same as iravrtg, all, in the i8th. But bur 
Translators when they render it, ' onany were made sinners, 
many were made righteous," what do they do less than 
lead and draw their unwary readers into error V ^ 

By far the most frequent fault with our Translators is the 
omission of the article in the translation when it stands in 
the original ; yet sometimes they fall into the converse error, 
and insert an article in the English where it does not stand 
in the Greek ; and this too, it may be, not without injury 
to the sense and intention of the sacred writer. It is so at 
Rom. iL 14, where we make St. Paul to say, " For when 
the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the 
things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are 
a law unto themselves.'' One might conclude from this, 
that the Apostle regarded such a fulfilling of the law on 
the part of the Gentiles, as ordinary and normal. Yet it 
is not TO. Wv7], but Wvri, and the passage must be rendered, 
" For when Gentiles, which have not the law, &c.," the 
Apostle having in these words his eye on the small election 
of heathendom, the exceptions, and not the rule. 

St. Paul has been sometimes charged with exaggeration 
in declaring that "the love of money is the root of all 
evil" (i Tim. vi. 10) ; and there have been attempts to 
mitigate the strength of the assertion, as that when he said 



A Sermon upon Pojpery. Works, vol. iii. p. 245; cf. p. 129. 



90 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR 

"all evil/' he only meant "mt(c^ evil/' The help, how- 
ever, does not lie here ; but in more strictly observing what 
he does say. " The love of money/' he declares, " is" — not 
" the root," but — " a root, of all evil." He does not affirm 
that this is the bitter root from which all evil springs, but a 
bitter root from which all evil may spring ; there is no sin 
of which it may not be, as of which it has not been, the 
impulsive motive. 

But perhaps at another place. Acts xxvi. 2, the inser- 
tion of the article in the English, where there is no article 
in the Greek, works still more injuriously. St. Paul would 
by no means have affirmed or admitted that "the Jews" 
accused him ; all true Jews, all who held fast the promises 
made to the Fathers, and now fulfilled in Christ, were on 
his side. He is accused " of Jews," unfaithful members of 
the house of Abraham, by no means " of the Jews." The 
force of ver. 7 is still more seriously impaired. In that 
verse St. Paul puts before Agrippa, a Jewish proselyte, 
and therefore capable of understanding him, the monstrous 
self-contradicting absurdity, that for cherishing and asserting 
the Messias-hope of his nation, he should now be accused — 
not of heathens, that would have been nothing strange — 
but "of Jews" when that hope was indeed the central 
treasure of the whole Jewish nation. — Before leaving this 
point, I may observe that "a Hebrew of Hebrews" (Phil, 
iii. 5), one, namely, of pure Hebrew blood and language 
('Ej3|oaToc £^ 'Ej3/oatwv), while it is more accurate, would tell 
also its own story much better than "a Hebrew of the 
Hebrews," as we have it now. 

II. Our Translators do not always seize the precise force 
of the prepositions. They have not done so in the passages 
which follow : 

John iv. 6. — "Jesus therefore being wearied with his 
journey, sat thus on the well." It should be rather, " by the 



IN OUR VERSION. 91 

weir' (eirl ry Trr^yy), in its immediate neighbourhood. On 
two other occasions, namely, Mark xiii. 29 ; John v. 2, they 
have rightly gone back from the more rigorous rendering of 
£7rt with a dative, to which they have here adhered : cf. Exod. 
ii. 15, LXX.1 

Heb. vi. 7. — "Herbs meet for them by whom it is 
dressed." The Translators give in the margin as an 
alternative, "for whom." But it is no mere alternative ; of 
^L ovQ (not ^L a)v), it is the only rendering which can be 
admitted. The rendering which has been preferred, besides 
being faulty in grammar, disturbs the spiritual image which 
underlies the passage. The heart of man is here the earth ; 
man is the dresser ; but the spiritual culture goes forward, 
not that the earth may bring forth that which is meet for 
him, the dresser by whom, but for God, the owner of the 
soil, for whom, it is dressed. The plural ^l ovg, instead of 
^L ov, need not trouble us, nor remove us from this, the 
only right interpretation. The earlier Latin version had 
it rightly ; see Tertullian, De Pudic. c. 20 : " Terra enim 
quae .... peperit herbam aptam his, propter quos et 
colitur, &c. ;' but the Vulgate, " a quibus" anticipates our 
mistake, in which we only follow the English translations' 
preceding. 

Lukexxiii.42. — "And he said unto Him, Lord, remember 
me when Thou comest into thy kingdom." But how 
could Christ come into his kingdom, when He is Him- 
self the centre of the kingdom, and brings the kingdom 
with Him ? The passage will gain immensely when, leaving 
that strange and utterly unwarranted assumption that 
ilg, a preposition of motion, is convertible with h, a pre- 
position of rest ; and thus that ev ry (5acnXdq, which 



^ Yet it ought to be said that Winer {Gramm. § 52, c.) is on the 
side of our Version as it stands. 



92 ON SOME ERROKS OF GREEK GRAMMAR 

stands here, is the same as elg tyjv jSaaiXdav, we translate, 
" Lord, remember me when Thou comest in thy kingdom" 
that is, " with all thy glorious kingdom about Thee,'' as is so 
sublimely set forth. Rev. xix. 14; cf. Jude 14; 2 Thess. i. 
7 ; Matt. XXV. 31 {Iv n) ^o^nj). It is the stranger that our 
Translators should have fallen into this error, seeing that 
they have translated Ip^o^^vov Iv rij ^aaikua avrov (Matt. 
xvi. 2,8) quite correctly ; " coming in his Icing dom." The 
Yulgate has " in regno tuo'' there, although it shares the 
error of our Translation, and has "in regnum tuum" here. 
The exegetical tact of Maldonatus overcomes on this, as 
on many other occasions, his respect for his 'authentic' 
Yulgate, and he comments thus : " Itaque non est sensus, 
Cum veneris ad regnandum, sed. Cum veneris jam regnans, 
cum veneris non ad acquirendum regnum, sed regno jam 
acquisito, quemadmodum venturus ad judicium est.'"' The 
same faulty rendering of Iv, and assumption that it may 
have the force of uq, occurs, Gal. i. 6 ; and indeed this, or 
the converse, in too many other passages as well.^ 

2 Cor. xi. 3. — " But I fear lest . . . your minds should be 
corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" {cltto Trig 
cnrXoriiTog tyiq elg rov Xpiarov). Here again the injurious 
supposition that dg and Iv may be confounded, has been at 
work, and to serious loss in the brino^ins^ out of the mean ins: 
of the passage. The airXorrig here is the simple undivided 
affection, the singleness of heart, of the Bride, the Church, ug 
XpicjTov, toward Christ. It is not their "simplicity in 
Christ" or Christian simplicity, which the Apostle fears lest 
they may through addiction to worldly wisdom forfeit and let 
go ; but, still moving in the images of espousals and marri- 

^ See Winer's Grramm. § 54, 4, where he enters at length into the 
question whether ets is ever used for iv, or iv for ets, in the New 
Testament. He denies both. 



IN OUR VERSION. 93 

age, that they may not bring a simple undivided heart 
to Christ. If after a7r\6Tr\Tif\Q we should also read kol r^c 
ayvoTTiTOQ, which seems probable, it will then be clearer 
still what St. Paulas intention was. 

2 Pet. i. 5 — 7. — " Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue 
knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to tem- 
perance patience, and to patience godliness, &c." (linxopr]- 
yriaar^ Iv rrj tticttel vfiCjv rrjv ap^rriv, k.t. X.) Tyn dale had 
rendered the passage : " In your faith minister virtue, and 
in your virtue knowledge, &c.," and all translations up to 
the Authorized had followed him. Henry More {On Godli- 
ness, b. 8. c. 3) has well expressed the objection to the present 
version : " Grotius would have iv to be redundant here ; 
so that his suffrage is for the English translation. But, for 
my own part, I think that iv is so far from being redundant 
that it is essential to the sentence, and interposed that we 
might understand a greater mystery than the mere adding 
of so many virtues one to another, which would be all that 
could be expressly signified if iv were left out. But the 
preposition here signifying causality, there is more than a 
mere enumeration of those divine graces. For there is also 
implied how naturally they rise one out of another, and 
that they have a causal dependence one of another.'^ See 
this same thought beautifully ca. "ed out in detail by 
Bengel, in loco. 

III. Our Translators do not always give the true force 
of tenses, moods, and voices. 

Oftentimes the present tense is used in the New Testa- 
ment, especially by St. John in the Apocalypse, to express 
the eternal Now of Him for whom there can be no past and 
no future. It must be considered a fault, when this is let 
go, and exchanged for a past tense in our Version. Take, 
for instance. Rev. iv. 5 : " Out of the throne proceeded 



94 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR 

lightnings, and thunderings, and voices/' But it is mucti more 
than this ; not merely at that one moment when St. John 
beheld, but evermore out of his throne 'proceed (EKiropevov- 
Tai) these symbols of the presence and of the terrible 
majesty of God. Throughout this chapter, and at chapter 
i. 14 — 16, there is often a needless, and sometimes an 
absolutely incorrect, turning of the present of eternity into 
the past of time. 

Elsewhere a past is turned without cause into a present. 
It is so at Acts xxviii. 4 : " No doubt this man is a 
murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet 
Vengeance suffereth not to live.'' A fine turn in the words 
of these barbarous islanders has been missed in our Version, 
and in all the English versions except the Geneva. The 
(5ap[5apoi, the 'natives,' as I think the word might have 
been fairly translated, who must have best known the 
qualities of the vipers on the island, are so confident of the 
deadly character of that one which has fastened itself on 
Paul's hand, that they regard and speak of him as one 
already dead, and in this sense use a past tense ; he is one 
whom "Vengeance suffered not {ovk uaaEv) to live." 
Bengel : "Non sivit; jam nullum putant esse Paulum ;" De 
Wette : "nicht habt leben lassen." Let me observe here, 
by the way, that our modern editions of the Bible should 
not have dropped the capital V with which ' Vengeance' 
was spelt in the exemplar edition of 16 11. These islanders, 
in their simple but most truthful moral instincts, did not 
contemplate 'Vengeance' or Aiky} in the abstract; but 
personified her as a goddess ; and our Translators, who are 
by no means prodigal of their capitals, in their manner of 
spelling the word, did their best to mark and reproduce 
this personification of the divine Justice, although the 
carelessness of printers has since let it go. 



IN OUR VERSION. 95 

Elsewhere there is confusion between the uses of the 
present and the perfect. There is such, for example, at 
Luke xviii. 12: "I give tithes of all that / possess." But 
oaa KTiofiai is not, " all that I possess," but, " all that I ac- 
quire" (" quae mihi acquire, quae mihi redeunt'') . The 
Yulgate, which has ' possideo,' shares, perhaps suggested, 
our error. In the perfect KiKTrijuai the word first obtains 
the force of " I possess," or, in other words, " I have ac- 
quired"^ The Pharisee would boast himself to be, so to 
say, another Jacob, such another as he who had said, "Of 
all that T?tou shalt give me, I will surely give the tenth 
unto Thee" (Gen. xxviii. 22 ; cf. xiv. 20), a careful performer 
of that precept of the law, which said, " Thou shalt truly 
tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the field bringeth 
forth year by year" (Deut. xiv. 22); but change * acquire' 
into ' possess,' and how much of this we lose. 

We must associate with this passage another, namely 
Luke xxi. 19 : "In your patience possess ye your souls ;" 
for the same correction ought there to find place. It is 
rather, " In your patience make ye your souls your own" — 
that is, "In and by your patience or endurance acquire your 
souls as indeed your own" ("salvas obtinete") . Thus Winer: 
" Durch Ausdauer erwerbt euch eure Seelen ; sie werden 
dann erst euer wahres, unverlierbares Eigenthum werden." 
It is noticeable that our Translators have corrected the 
* possess' of all the preceding versions at Matt. x. 9, ex- 
changed this for the more accurate 'provide' (icr?)cr7j(70£), 
or, as it is in the margin ' get ;' which makes it strange 
that they should have allowed it in these other places to 
stand. 

Imperfects lose their proper force, and are dealt with as 



See Winer's Gramm. § 41, 4. 



96 OX SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR 

aorists and perfects. The vividness of the narration often 
suffers from the substitution of the pure historic for what 
may be called the descriptive tense ; as, for example, at 
Luke xiv. 7 : " He put forth a parable to those that were 
bidden when He marked how they chose out the chief 
rooms." Read, " how they lueve choosing out (f^fXtyovro) 
the chief rooms" — the sacred historian j)lacing the Lord's 
utterance of the parable in the midst of the events which 
he is describing. So Acts iii. 1 : "Now Peter and John 
went up together into the temple." Read, " luere going up" 
{aviPaivov) . Again, Mark ii. 18: " And the disciples of 
John and of the Pharisees used to fast" Read, " were 
fasting" (^o-av vvarEvovreg) namely, at that very time ; 
which gives a special vigour to their remonstrances ; they 
were keeping a fast while the Lord's disciples were cele- 
brating a festival. The incomplete, imperfect sense, which 
so often belongs to this tense, and from which it derives its 
name, they often fail to give ; the commencement of a work 
which is not brought to a conclusion, the consent and co- 
operation of another party, which was necessary for its 
completion, having been withheld ; in such cases the will 
is taken for the deed.^ Thus, Luke i. 59 : " And they called 
him Zacharias." It is not so, for Elizabeth would not 
allow this name to be given him ; but with the true force 
of the incomplete imperfect tense, "they iveve calling 
(cKaXofv) him Zacharias." Once more, Luke v. 6 \ "And 
their net brake." Had this been so, they would scarcely have 
secured the fish at all. Rather, " was in the act of break- 
ing," or " was at the point to break" {^leppy^ywro). Other 
passages where they do not give the force of the imperfect, 
but deal with it as though it had been a perfect or an 



^ See Jelf's Kuhner's Grammar,^ 398, 2. 



IN OUR VERSION. 97 

aorist, are John iii. 22; iv. 47 ; vi. 21 ; Luke xxiv. 32; 
Matt. xiii. 34 ; Acts xi. 20. 

Aorists are rendered as if they were perfects ; and perfects 
as if they were aorists. Thus we have an example of the 
first, Luke i. 19, where aweaTaXrjv is translated as though it 
were aTrearaXfjiai, " I am sent/' instead of, " I was sent." 
Gabriel contemplates his mission not at the moment of its 
present fulfilment, but from that of his first sending forth 
from the presence of God. Another example of the same 
occurs at 2 Pet. i. 14 : " Knowing that shortly I must put 
off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath 
shewed me" By this " hath shewed me'' we lose altogether 
the special allusion to an historic moment in the Apostle's 
life, to John xxi. 18, 19, which would at once come out, if 
i^riXcocri fxoi had been rendered, " shewed me." Doubtless 
there are passages which would make difficult the universal 
application of the rule that perfects should be translated as 
perfects, and aorists as aorists ; thus Luke xiv. 18, 19, where 
one might hesitate in rendering iiyopaaa ' I bought,' instead 
of * I have bought/ and some at least in the long line of 
aorists, sSo^ao-a, erfXetwaa, EifiavEpuxra, cXajSov (ver. 4, 6, 8), 
in the high- priestly prayer, John xvii. Still on these 
passages no conclusion can be grounded that the writers 
of the New Testament did not always observe the dis- 
tinction.^ 

Again, the force of the aorist is missed, though in another 
way, at Mark xvi. 2, where avardXavTog rov rjXiov is trans- 
lated, " at the rising of the sun." It can only be, " when 
the sun was risen," Did the anxiety to avoid a slight 
seeming discrepancy between this statement and that of 
two other Evangelists (Matt, xxviii. I ; Mark xvi. 2) modify 
the translation here ? 

^ See Winer, Gramm. § 41, 5. 
H 



98 ON SOME EREORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR 

Examples, on the other hand, of perfects turned into 
aorists are frequent. Thus at Luke xiii. 2 : " Suppose ye 
that these Galileans were sinners above all the Gali- 
leans, because they suffered such things V Rather, 
"because they have suffered (TrtirovOamv) such things." 
Our Lord contemplates the memorable catastrophe by which 
they perished, not as something belonging merely to the 
historic past ; but as a fact reaching into the present ; still 
vividly presenting itself to the mind's eye of his hearers. 

One other example must suffice. In that great doc- 
trinal passage, Col. i. 13 — 22, St. Paul declares, ver. 16, 
that "by Christ were all things created." The aorist 
iKTiaOri has its right force given to it here ; but the Apostle 
in a most remarkable way, when in the last clause of the 
verse he resumes the doctrine of the whole, changes the 
aorist iKTicrOr} for the perfect eKridrai. And why ? Because 
he is no longer looking at the one historic act of creation, 
but at the permanent results flowing on into all time and 
eternity therefrom. Our Translators have not followed 
him here, but, as if no change had been made, they render 
this clause also : " All things were created by Him, and 
for Him ;'' but read rather : " All things have been created 
by Him, and for Him.''^ 

Imperfects and aorists are turned without necessity into 
pluperfects. It is admitted by all that an aorist, under 
certain conditions, may have this sense of a past behind 
another past f nor, according to some, can this force be 
altogether denied to the imperfect ; but a pluperfect force 



1 The fact that we almost all learn our grammar from the Latin, and 
that in the Latin the perfect indicative does its own duty and that of 
the aorist as well, renders us very inohservant of inaccuracies in this 
particular hind, till we have been specially trained to observe them. 

2 What these conditions are, see Winer's Gramm. § 41, 5. 



m OUR VERSION. 99 

is given in our Version to these tenses where certainly no 
sort of necessity requires it. Thus, for the words, " because 
He had done these things on the sabbath" (John v. i6), 
read, "because He did (eiroUi) these things on the 
sabbath." And, again, in the same chapter read, " for 
Jesus conveyed Himself away" (e^ivevcrev) ; that is, so 
soon as this discussion between the Jews and the healed 
man arose, not, " had conveyed Himself away" previously, 
as our "Version would imply.- 

Neither do our Translators always give its right force to 
a middle verb. They fail to do so at Phil. ii. 15 : " among 
whom ye shine as lights in the world." To justify these 
words, " ye shine" which are shared by all the Yersions 
of the English Hexapla, St. Paul ought to have written 
(paivere^ and not (paiveaOe, as he has written, ^aivuv, 
indeed, is to shine (John i. 5 ; 2 Pet. i. 19 ; Rev. i. 16) ; 
but (paivsaOai to appear (Matt, xxiiii. 27 ; i Pet. iv. 18 ; 
Jam. iv. 14). It is worthy of note, that while the Vul- 
gate, having 'lucetis,'' shares and anticipates our error, 
the earlier Italic Version was free from it ; as is evident 
from the verse as quoted by Augustine {Enarr. in Psalm. 
cxlvi. 4) : " In quibus apparetis tanquam luminaria in 
mundo." 

Sometimes the force of a passive is lost. Thus is it at 
2 Cor. V. 10 : " For we must all appear before the judgment 
seat of Christ." The words contain a yet more solemn and 
awful announcement than this : " For we must all be made 
manifest" (Travrag rjuxag (pavepwOrivai Set), "exhibited as 
what we indeed are, displayed in our true colours, the 
secrets of our hearts disclosed, and we, so to speak, turned 
inside out" (for the word means as much as this) " before 
the judgment seat of Christ." There is often reason to think 
that the exposition of Chrysostom exercised considerable 



100 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR 

influence on our Translators. Here it might have done so 
with benefit ; for commenting on these words (in Cor. 
HoTYh. lo) he says: oi> yojo irapaarrivaL r]jiaQ cnrXuyg ^ei, 
aXXa Kal (j>avepu)Orivai, showing that he would not have 
been satisfied with what our Translators have here done. 

With one or two miscellaneous observations I will con- 
clude this chapter. It would be very impertinent to sup- 
pose that our Translators, who numbered in their company 
many of tbe first scholars of their time, were not perfectly 
at home in the use of Trag, and familiar with the very 
simple modifications of its meaning as employed with or 
without an article ; and yet it must be owned that they do 
not always observe its rules. One example may suffice. 

Acts X. 1%. — "Wherein were all manner of four-footed 
beasts of the earth."' But wavra ra reTpairoda cannot pos- 
sibly have the meaning ascribed to it here. Translate 
rather : " Wherein were all the four-footed beasts of the 
earth" — " omnia animalia," as the Vulgate rightly has it. 
Here probably, as Winer observes, they were tempted to 
forsake the more accurate rendering from an unwillingness 
to ascribe something which seemed to them like exag- 
geration to the sacred historian : how, they said to them- 
selves, could " all the four-footed beasts of the earth" be 
contained in that sheet ? For indeed this shrinking from a 
meaning which an accurate translation would render up, 
is a very frequent occasion of mistranslation, and also of 
warped exegesis. It is much better, however, that the trans- 
lator should go forward on his task without regard to such 
considerations as these. The Word of God can take care 
of, and vindicate itself, and does not need to be thus taken 
under man's protection. 

It is remarkable how little careful our Translators are 
to note the difference between the verb of being and that 



IN OUR VEHSION. 101 

of becoming ; between uixl and yiyova. It would not be 
easy to find the passage in the New Testament where these 
are confounded, but they confound them frequently, and 
often to our loss. Thus, at Heb. v. II, the Apostle com- 
plains of the difiBculty of unfolding some hard truths to 
those whom he addresses, " seeing ye are dull of hearing/^ 
But the rebuke is sharper than this — " seeing ye have 
become dull of hearing'' (cttei vu)6poi yeyovars ratg aKoaig). 
This would imply that it was not so once, in the former 
days, when they first were enlightened (x. 32) ; but that 
now they had gone back from that liveliness of spiritual 
apprehension which once they had (see Chrysostom). The 
Vulgate has it rightly : " Quoniam imbecilles facti estis ad 
audiendum :' being followed by the Rheims : " Because ye 
are become weak to hear ;" so, too, De Wette : " Da ihr 
trage von Yerstande geworden seid" At Matt. xxiv. 32, 
there is the same loss of the true force of the word. Not 
the being tender of the branch of the fig-tree, but the 
becoming tender, is the sign of the nearness of summer. 

In other points our Translators are without fault, where 
yet the modern copies by careless reproduction of their 
work involve them in apparent error, which indeed is none 
of theirs, but that of the too careless guardians of their 
text. They have their own burden to bear ; they ought 
not to be made to bear the burden of others. But they do 
so at Matt. xii. 23. Correcting all our previous trans- 
lations, they rendered the words, /llyitl ovrog 1(ttiv 6 vloc 
AajStS, with perfect accuracy : " Is this the Son of David V 
fully understanding that, according to the different idioms 
of the Greek and English, the negative particle of the 
original was not to re-appear in the English ; cf Acts vii. 42 ; 
John viiL 22. I am unable to say when the reading, which 
appears in all our modem Bibles, " Is not this the Son of 



102 ON ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR IN OUR VERSION. 

David?" first crept in ; it is already in Hammond, 1659 ; 
but it is little creditable to those who should have 
kept their text inviolate, that they have not exercised a 
stricter vigilance over it. It is curious that having escaped 
error here, our Translators should yet have fallen into it 
in the exactly similar phrase at John iv. 29, ju?jrt ovtoq 
lariv 6 XpicTTog ; where they do render, " Is not this the 
Christ V but should have rendered, " Is this the Christ ? " 
The Samaritan woman in her joy, as speaking of a thing 
too good to be true, which she will suggest, but dare not 
absolutely affirm, asks of her fellow-countrymen, " Is this 
the Christ ? — can this be He whom we have looked for so 
long ?" — expecting in reply not a negative, but an affirma- 
tive answer. 



CHAPTER VIIL 

ON SOME QUESTIONABLE RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 

'T^HERE are a certain number of passages in which no 
-^ one can charge our Translators with error, the version 
they have given being entirely defensible, and numbering 
among its defenders some, it may be many, well worthy to 
be heard; while yet another version on the whole will 
commend itself as preferable to that which they have 
adopted. Let me adduce a few passages where, to me at 
least, it seems there is a greater probability, in some a 
far greater, in favour of some other translation rather than 
of that which they have admitted. 

Matt. vi. 37 (cf. Luke xii. 25). — "Which of you by 
taking thought can add one cubit to his stature ?" 
Erasmus was, I believe, the first who suggested the ren- 
dering of TiXiKia not by ' stature,' but by " length of life ;" 
and this his suggestion has since found acceptance with a 
large number of interpreters; with Hammond, Wolf, 
Olshausen, Meyer, and others. While the present trans- 
lation may be abundantly justified, yet this certainly 
appears far preferable to me, and for the following reasons : 
a. In that natural rhetoric of which our Lord was the 
great master. He would have adduced some very small 
measure, and reminded his hearers that they could not add 
even this to their stature ; He would not have adduced a 
cubit, which is about a foot and a half; but He would have 
demanded, "Which of you with all your carking and 



104 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE 

caring can add an inch or a hair's breadth to his stature ?" 
j3. Men do not practically take thought about adding 
to their stature ; it is not an object of desire to one in a 
thousand to be taller than God has made him ; this could 
scarcely therefore be cited as one of the vain solicitudes of 
men. On the other hand everything exactly fits when we 
understand our Lord to be asking this question about 
length of life. The cubit, which is much when compared 
with a man's stature, is infinitesimally small, and there- 
fore most appropriate, when compared to his length of life, 
that life being contemplated as a course, or dpo/uLOQ, which 
he may attempt, but ineffectually, to prolong. And then 
further this the prolonging of life is something which men 
do seek ; striving, by various precautions, by solicitous 
care, to lengthen the period of their mortal existence ; to 
which yet they cannot add a cubit, no, not a hand's breadth, 
more than God has apportioned to it. 

Luke ii. 49. — " Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Fathers business V But Iv Tolg rov Ylarpog will as well 
mean, " in my Father's house :" and if the words will 
mean this as well, they will surely mean it better. We 
shall thus have a more direct answer on the part of the 
Child Jesus to the implied rebuke of his blessed Mother's 
words, " Behold thy father and I have sought Thee sorrow- 
ing " to which He answers, " How is it tjiat ye sought 
Me ?" — that is, in any other place ? " Wist ye not that I 
must be in Tny Fathers house ? here in the temple ; and 
here without lengthened seeking ye might have found me 
at once." There was a certain misconception in respect of 
his person and character, which had led them to look for 
Him in other places of resort rather than in the temple. 

John xii, 6. — " He was a thief, and had the bag, and 
hare what was put therein." I cannot but think that ii 



RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 105 

was St. John's intention to say not merely that Judas 
" bare/' but that he " bare away^' purloined, or pilfered 
what was put into the common purse. It has the appear- 
ance of a tautology to say that he " had the bag, and hare 
what was put therein ;" unless indeed the latter words 
are introduced to explain the opportunity which he 
enjoyed of playing the thief; hardly, as it appears to me, 
a sufficient explanation. On the other hand, the use of 
^aaraZuv not in the sense of 'portare," but of ' auferre," is 
frequent ; it is so used by Josephus, Antt. xiv. 7. 1, and in 
the New Testament, John xx. 15, and such, I am persuaded, 
is the use of it here. We note that already in Augustine's 
time the question had arisen which was the right way to 
deal with the words; for, commenting on the 'portabat' 
which he found in his Italic, as it has kept its place in the 
Vulgate, he asks, " Portabat an exportabat ? Sed ministerio 
portabat, furto exportabat.'' Here he might seem to leave 
his own view of the passage undecided ; not so however at 
Ep. 108. 3: "Ipsi [Apostoli] de illo scripserunt quod fur 
erat, et omnia quse mittebantur de dominicis loculis aufe- 
rebat" After all is said, there will probably always remain 
upholders of one translation and upholders of the other ; 
yet to my. mind the probabilities are much in favour of 
that version which I observe that the " Five Clergymen" 
have also adopted. 

Rom. i. 26, 27. — I speak with hesitation, yet inchne 
strongly to think that in this awful passage where St. Paul 
dares to touch on two of the worst enormities of the 
heathen world, and with purest lips to speak, and that 
with all necessary plainness, of the impurest things, we 
should have done well, if we had followed even to 
the utmost where he would lead us. For 'men' and 
* women,' as often as the words occur in these verses, I 



106 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE 

should wish to see substituted ' males' and ' females \ 
apaeveg and OrtX^ai are throughout the words which St. 
Paul employs. It is true that something must be indulged 
to the delicacy of modern Christian ears ; our Translators 
have evidently so considered in rendering more than one 
passage in the Old Testament ; but, reading these verses 
over with this substitution, while they gain in emphasis, 
while they represent more exactly the terrible charge which 
St. Paul brings against the cultivated world of heathendom, 
they do not seem to me to acquire any such painful ex- 
plicitness as they ought not to have, hardly more of this 
than they possessed before. 

2 Cor. ii. 14. — " Now thanks be unto God which always 
causeth us to triumph in Christ." Here, too, our Trans- 
lators may be right, and, if they are wrong, it is in good 
company. I must needs think that for "causeth us to 
triumph" we should read, "leadeth us in triumph;" and 
that the Yulgate, when it rendered OpiafijBsvwv v/^ag, " qui 
triumphat nos," and Jerome (which is the same thing), 
" qui triumphat de nobis,'"' though even he has failed to 
bring out his meaning with clearness, were right. Opia/j.- 
jSfvttv occurs but on one other occasion in the New Testa- 
ment (Col. ii. 5). No one there doubts that it means, to 
lead in triumph, to make a show of, as vanquished and 
subdued ; and it is hard to withdraw this meaning from it 
here, being as it also is the only meaning of the word in 
classical Greek ; thus Plutarch, Thes. et Rotyi. iv. : (5a<jiXdg 
I6piaiuj5ev(j£ Kai Tiyejuovag : he led kings and captains in 
triumph ; and see other examples in Wetstein. But, it 
may be asked, what will St. Paul mean by the declaration, 
" who everywhere leadeth us in triumph in Christ ?" The 
meaning is, indeed, a very grand one. St. Paul did not 
feel it inconsistent with the profoundest humility, to regard 



RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 107 

himself as a signal trophy and token of God's victorious 
power in Christ. Lying with his face upon the ground, he 
had anticipated, though in another sense, the words of 
another fighter against God, " Yicisti, Galilsee \' and now 
his Almighty Conqueror was leading him about through 
all the cities of the Greek and Roman world, an illustrious 
testimony of his power at once to subdue and to save. The 
foe of Christ was now, as he gloried in naming himself, the 
servant of Christ ; and this, his mighty transformation, 
God was making manifest to the glory of his name in every 
place. The attempt of some to combine the meanings of 
being led in triumph, which they feel that the word 
demands, and triumphing or being made to triumph, which 
it seems to them the sense demands, is in my judgment an 
attempt to reconcile irreconcileable images ; as, for instance, 
when Stanley says, " The sense of conquest and degrada- 
tion is lost in the more general sense of ' making us to share 
this triumph.' " But in the literal triumph who so pitiable, 
so abject, so forlorn, as the captive chief or king, the 
Jugurtha or Vercingetorix, doomed often, as soon as he had 
graced the show, to a speedy and miserable death ? But it 
is not with God as with man ; for while to be led in triumph 
of men is the most miserable, to be led in triumph of God 
as the willing trophy of his power, is the most glorious and 
blessed lot which could fall to any; and it is this, I am 
persuaded, which the Apostle claims for his own. 

2 Cor. ii. 17. — " For we are not as many, luhich corrupt 
the Word of God." Doubtless there is much to be said in 
favour of this version of KaTTr\\i.vovTig tov X070V tov Geou. 
KaTTTjXevEfv is often to adulterate, voOevuv, as Chrysostom 
expounds it, to mingle false with true, as the KawriXog, or 
petty huckster, would frequently do. Still the matter is by no 
means so clear in favour of this meaning of KaTrrtXtveiv, and 



108 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE 

against the other, " to make a traffic of/' as some in later 
times would have it ; and the words £$ dXiKpivda^y which 
Meyer conceives decisive, seems to me rather an argument 
the other way. What so natural as that St. Paul should 
put hack the charge of making a traffic with the Word of 
God ; above all, seeing how earnestly elsewhere in this 
Epistle he clears himself from similar charges (xii. 14, 17)? 
I believe when Tyndale rendered Ka7rr}\evBLv here, " to chop 
and change with," he was on the right track; and many 
will remember the remarkable passage in Bentley's 
Sermon upon Popery, which is so strong in this view, 
that, long as it is, I cannot forbear to quote it: "Our 
English Translators have not been very happy in their 
version of this passage. We are not, says the Apostle, 
Ka7rr?X£uovT£c tov \6yov tov Qeov, which our Translators 
have rendered, ' We do not corrupt' or (as in the margin) 
deal deceitfully with ' the Word of God." They were led to 
this by the parallel place, c. iv. of this Epistle, ver. 2, ' not 
walking in craftiness,' firj^e doXovvreg tov \6yov tov 0£ou, 
* nor handling the word of God deceitfully ;' they took Kairri- 
XevovTsg and doXovvT^g in the same adequate notion, as the 
vulgar Latin had done before them, which expresses both 
by the same word, adulterantes verbum Dei ; and so, like- 
wise, Hesychius makes them synonyms, iKKairriXeveiVf 
^oXovv. AoXovv, indeed, is fitly rendered adulterare ; so 
doXovv TOV -xpvfTov, TOV olvov, to adultcrato gold or wine, 
by mixing worse ingredients with the metal or liquor. And 
our Translators had done well if they had rendered the 
latter passage, not adulterating, not sophisticating the 
Word. But KairnXevovTzq in our text has a complex idea 
and a wider signification ; KairriXivuv always comprehends 
^oXouv ; but SoXoOi' never extends to KairriXtvuv, which, 
besides the sense of adulterating, has an additional notion 



RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 109 

of unjust lucre, gain, profit, advantage. This is plain from 
the word KdirrjiXog, a calling always infamous for avarice 
and knavery: perfidus hie caupo, says the poet, as a general 
character. Thence KarniXevEiVf by an easy and natural 
metaphor, was diverted to other expressions where cheat- 
ing and lucre were signified : KairriXtveiv rov Xoyov, says the 
Apostle here, and the ancient Greeks, KairrjXevEiv tclq diKag, 
T^v slprivriv, Trjv aoipiav, ra juaOrifjLara, to corrupt and sell 
justice, to barter a negociation of peace, to prostitute 
learning and philosophy for gain. Cheating, we see, and 
adulterating is part of the notion of KaTrrjX^veiv, but the 
principal essential of it is sordid lucre. So cauponari in the 
famous passage of Ennius, where Pyrrhus refuses the offer 
of a ransom for his captives, and restores them gratis : 

Non mi aurum posco, nee mi pretium dederitis, 
Non cauponanti bellum, sed belligeranti. 

And so the Fathers expound this place .... So that, in 
short, what St. Paul says, jcaTrrjXfvovrac tov Xoyov, might 
be expressed in one classic word — XoyEjuLiropot, or XoyoTrparaL, 
where the idea of gain and profit is the chief part of the 
signification. Wherefore, to do justice to our text, we must 
not stop lamely with our Translators, * corrupters of the 
word of God ;' but add to it as its plenary notion, ' cor- 
rupters of the word of God for filthy lucre/ "^ 

Col. ii. 8. — " Beware lest any man spoil you through 
philosophy and vain deceit." This translation may very 
well hold its place : crvXayivyeXv does mean to rob or spoil ; 
this, however, is its secondary meaning ; its first, and that 
which agrees with its etymology (avXov and ayw) would be, 
to lead away the spoil, " prsedam abigere ;' and certainly 



Works, vol. 3, p. 242. 



110 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE 

the warning would be more emphatic if we understood it as 
a warning lest they themselves should become the spoil or 
booty of these false teachers : " Beware lest any man maJce 
a booty of you, lead you away as his spoil, through 
philosophy and vain deceit.'"' Bengel : " o-uXaywywy, qui 
non solum de vohis, sed vos ipsos spolium faciat/' 

Col. ii. 23. — " Which things have indeed a shew of 
wisdom in will- worship, and humility, and neglecting of the 
body, not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh" 
The first part of this verse, itself not very easy, appears to 
me to be excellently rendered in our Version. Perhaps, if 
the thing were to do over again, instead of "a shew of 
wisdom,'' " a reputation of wisdom" would more exactly 
express X070V aocpiag : and there may be a question 
whether ' neglecting' is quite strong enough for a<pti^ia, 
whether ' punishing' or ' not sparing,' which are both sug- 
gested in the margin, would not either of them have been 
well introduced into the text. But in the latter part of 
the verse, where its chief difficulties reside, our Translators 
leave us in a certain doubt as to what their exact view of 
the passage was. About the Geneva Version I have no 
doubt. Its authors, evidently under the leading of Beza, 
have seized the right meaning : " [Yet] are of no value, 
[but appertain to those things] wherewith the flesh is 
crammed." At the same time, their version is too para- 
phrastic ; the words which I have enclosed within brackets 
having no corresponding words in the original. Did our 
Translators mean the same thing ? I am inclined to think 
not ; else they would have placed a comma after ' honour ;' 
but that rather they, in agreement with many of the 
best Interpreters of their time, understood the verse thus : 
" Which things have a shew of wisdom, &c., but are not in 
any true honour, as things serving to the satisfying of the 



RENDERINGS OF WORDS. Ill 

just needs of the body/' Against this it may be urged that 
TrXridfiovri has a coDstant sense of filling overmuch, of 
stuffing (Isai. i. 14; Ps. cv. 16; Ezek. xvi 48); and fol- 
lowed by aapKOQ could scarcely have any other sense ; it 
being impossible that gclq^ here can be used in an honour- 
able intention as equivalent to G^jxa, but only in the constant 
Pauline sense of the flesh and mind of the flesh. Some 
rendering which should express what the Geneva Version 
expresses, but in happier and conciser terms is, I believe, 
here to be desired. " A golden sentence,'' as he calls it, 
which Bengel quotes from the Commentary of Hilary the 
Deacon on this passage, "Sagina carnalis sensus traditio 
humana est/' shews that this interpretation of it was not 
unknown in antiquity. 

I Tim. vi 8. — " Having food and raiment, let us be 
therewith content." Would it not be better to translate, 
" Having food and covering, let us be therewith content" ? 
It is possible that St. Paul had only raiment in his eye ; 
and o-K£7ra<7^a is sometimes used in this more limited 
sense (Plato, Polit. 279 d) ; but seeing that it may very 
well include, and does very often include, habitation, this 
more general word, which it would have been still free for 
those who liked to understand as ' raiment' alone, appears to 
me preferable. The Yulgate, which translates, " Habentes 
alimenta et quihus tegamur," and De Wette, 'Be- 
deckung,' give the same extent to the word. 

Jam. iii. 5. — " Behold how great a matter a little fire 
kindleth !" This may be right. Our Translators have the 
high authority of St. Jerome on their side, who renders 
{in Esai. 66) : " Parvus ignis quam grandem succendit 
materiam ;" and compare Ecclus. xxviii. 10 ; yet certainly 
it is much more in the spirit and temper of this grand 
imaginative passage to take vXr\v here as ' wood' or ' forest :' 



112 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 

"Behold, how great a forest a little spark kindleth !" So 
the Vulgate long ago : " Ecce quantus ignis quam magnam 
silvam incendit I" and De Wette : " Siehe, ein kleines Feuer, 
welch einen grossen Wald ziindet es an I" It need hardly 
be observed how frequently in ancient classical poetry the 
image of the little spark setting the great forest in a blaze 
recurs — in Homer, II. xi. 155, in Pindar, Pyth. iii. 66, and 
elsewhere ; nor yet how much better this of the wrapping 
of some vast forest in a flame by the falling of a single 
spark sets out that which was in St. James' mind, namely, 
of a far-spreading mischief springing from a smallest cause, 
than does the vague sense which in our Version is attached 
to the word. Our Translators have placed ' wood ' in the 
margin. 

Rev. iii. 2. — " Strengthen the things which remain, that 
are ready to die." The better Commentators are now 
pretty well agreed that ra \onra, thus rendered " the 
things which remain," should be taken rather as = tovq 
\onrovg, and that the Angel of the Sardian Church is not 
bidden, as we generally understand it, to strengthen the 
graces that remain in his own heart, but the few and feeble 
believers that remain in the Church over which he presides ; 
the allusion being probably to Ezek. xxxiv. 3. Vitringa : 
"Commendat vigilantiam, qua sibi a morte caverent, et 
alios ab interitu imminente vindicarent." The use of the 
neuter, singular and plural, where not things but persons 
are intended, is too frequent in the New Testament, to 
cause any difficulty here (Winer, Gramm. § 27, 4). 



CHAPTER IX. 

ON SOME WORDS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 

OUR Translators occasionally fail in part or altogether 
to give the true force of a word or phrase. In some 
cases it is evident they have assumed a wrong etymology. 
These are examples : — 

Matt. viii. 20. — " The birds of the air have nests." It 
stood thus in the versions preceding ; the Yulgate in like 
manner has * nidos ;' some of the earher Latin versions, 
however, instead of * nidos' had * diversoria,' and Augustine, 
using one of these, has ' tabernacula,' ^ and these, with 
their equivalent English, are on all accounts the preferable 
renderings. For in the first place birds do not retire to 
their ' nests," except at one brief period of the year ; and 
then secondly, Karao-KTjvwo-Etc will not bear that meaning; 
or at all events has so much naturally the more general 
meaning of shelters, habitations Q Wohnungen,' De Wette), 
that one must needs agree with Grotius, who here remarks : 
" Quin vox haec ad arborum ramos pertineat, dubitaturum 
non puto qui loca infra, xiii. 32, Marc. iv. 32, et Luc. xiii. 19, 
inspexerit.'' He might have added to these, Ps. civ. 12 ; 
Dan. iv. 18, LXX. 

Matt. X. 4 ; cf. Mark iii. 1 8. — " Simon the Canaanite." 
I have often asked myself in perplexity what our Trans- 
lators meant by this ' Canaanite ; which they are the 



^ QucBst. xvii. in Matt. qu. ^. 
I 



114 ON SOME WORDS 

first to use ; although Cranmer's, " Simon of Canaan," and 
probably Tyndale's, " Simon of Canan," come to the same 
thing. Take ' Canaanite' in its obvious sense, and in that 
which everywhere else in the Scripture it possesses (Gen. 
xii. 6 ; Exod. xxv. 28 ; Zech. xiv. 21, and continually), and 
the word would imply that one of the Twelve, of those that 
should sit on the twelve thrones judging the tribes of 
Israel, was himself not of the seed of Abraham, but of that 
accursed stock, which the children of Israel, going back 
from God's commandment, had failed utterly to extirpate on 
their entrance into the Promised Land ; and which, having 
thus been permitted to live, had gradually been absorbed 
into the nation. This of course could not be ; to say no- 
thing of the word in the original being KavavtVrjc, and not 
Xavavaloq, as would have been necessary to justify the 
rendering of the Authorized Version. There can be no 
doubt that KavaviTrig here is = Z^\lDTr]g, Luke vi. 15 ; Acts 
i. 13; and expresses the fact that Simon had been, before 
he joined himself to the Lord, one of those stormy zealots 
who, professing to follow the example of Phineas (Num. 
xxv. 9), took the vindication of God's outraged law into 
their own hands. There is, indeed, another explanation 
sometimes given of the word ; but the manner in which 
our Translators have spelt ' Canaanite' will hardly allow 
one to suppose that by it they meant, "of Cana,"' the 
village in Galilee. This is Jerome's view, and I suppose 
Beza's (' Cananites'), and De Wette's (' Der Kananit') ; yet 
Kava would surely yield, not KavaytVr^c, but Kavirrjc, as 
*'A/38r]|oa, 'A/3Sr]ptr?]c- I confess myself wholly at a loss to 
understand the intention of our Translators. The same 
difficulty attends the " Simon Chananceus" of the Vulgate. 
Matt. xiv. 8. — " And she, being before instructed of her 
mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a 



WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 115 

charger/^ A meaning is given here to 7rpoj5i(5aa0e7<Ta 
which the word will not bear. I do not think that the 
Vulgate exercised much influence on our Translators ; yet 
the 'prsemonita' of it may have led the way to this error. 
Upo(5i(5dZeiv is to urge on, or push forward, to make to 
advance, or sometimes, intransitively, to advance ; the tt/oo 
not being of time, but of place ; thus TrjOojSt/BaSciv ttjv 
iraTpida, to set forward the might of one's country (Polyb. 
ix. lo, 4) ; and it is sometimes used literally, sometimes figu- 
ratively. On the one other occasion when it occurs in the 
New Testament, it is used literally ; 7r/oo£j3(j3a(Tav 'AXt- 
^avEpov (Acts xix. 33), "they pushed forward,'" not, "they 
drew out, Alexander •/' here figuratively and morally. 
We may conceive the unhappy girl with all her vanity and 
levity, yet shrinking from the petition of blood, which her 
mother would put into her hps, and needing to be urged 
on, or pushed forward, before she could be induced to make 
it; and this is implied in the word. I should translate, 
" And she, being urged on by her mother." 

Matt. xiv. 13. — " They followed Him on foot out of the 
cities.'' UeZy might very well mean " on foot ;" yet it does 
not mean so here ; but rather, " by land." There could be no 
question that the multitude who followed Jesus would in 
in the main proceed " on foot," and not in chariots or on 
horses, and it is not this which the Evangelist desires to 
state. The contrast which he would draw is between the 
Lord who reached the desert place by ship (see the earlier 
part of the verse), and the multitude who found their way 
thither by land. Compare the use of ireZeveiv at Acts xx. 
13, by the Eheims rightly translated, " to journey by land ;" 
but in our Translation, not with the same precision, " to 
go afoot." 

Mark xi. 4, — " A place where two ways met." "A/i<^o^oc 

I 2 



116 ON SOME WORDS 

(diJ.(l)L and 6^6g) is rather, a way round, a crooked 
lane. 

Mark xii. 26. — " Have ye not read in the book of Moses, 
how in the hush God spake unto him?" But IttX rijc 
jSarou, as all acknowledge now, is not, " in the bush,'' as 
indicating the place from which God spake to Moses, but 
means, "in that portion of Scripture which goes by the 
name of The Bush" — the Jews being wont to designate 
different portions of Scripture by the most memorable 
thing or fact recorded in them ; thus one portion was 
called 7} pdrog. How, indeed, to tell this story in the 
English Version is not easy to determine, without forsaking 
the translator's sphere, and entering on that of the com- 
mentator. I may observe that kv 'HXm (Rom. xi. 2) is a 
quotation of the same kind. It can never mean, " of Elias," 
as in our Translation ; but is rather, " in the history of 
Elias," in that portion of Scripture which tells of him ; so 
De Wette : " in der Geschichte des Elia." 

Acts xiv. i^'. — " We also are men of like passions with 
you." This fact would not have disproved in the eyes of 
these Lycaonians the right of Paul and Silas to be con- 
sidered gods. The heathen were only too ready to ascribe 
to their gods like passions, revenge, lust, envy, with their 
own. 'OjuoioiraOetg vfuv means rather, "subject to like 
conditions," that is, of pain, sickness, old age, death, " with 
yourselves." Translate, " We also are men who suffer like 
things with yourselves." The Vulgate, " Et nos mortales 
sumus," is on the right track ; and Tyndale, " We are 
Wjortal men like unto you." The only other passage in 
the New Testament in which ofioioiraOrig occurs (Jam. v. 1 7), 
will need to be slightly modified in the same sense. 

Acts xvii. 32. — " I perceive that in all things ye are 
too superstitious/' This, as Luther's " all^u aberglaiibisch," 



WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 117 

is a rendering very much to be regretted. Whatever 
severe things St. Paul might be obhged to say to his 
hearers, yet it was not his way to begin by insulting, and 
in this way alienating them from himself, and from the 
truth of which he was the bearer. Kather, if there was 
anything in them which he could praise, he would praise 
that, and only afterwards condemn that which demanded 
condemnation. So is it here ; he affirmed, and no doubt 
they took it for praise, that by his own observation he had 
gathered they were (hg dEKTi^aijuovearipovQ, as men greatly 
addicted to the worship of deities, " very religious,'' as I 
should render it, giving to ' religious' its true sense, and 
not the mischievous sense which it has now acquired. So 
Beza, ' religiosiores ;' and De Wette, "sehr gottesfiirchtig." 
This was the praise which all antiquity gave to the 
Athenians, and which Paul does not withhold, using at the 
same time with the finest tact and skill a middle word, 
capable of a good sense, and capable of a bad — a word 
originally of honourable meaning, but which had already 
slipped in part into a dishonourable sense ; thus finely 
insinuating that this service of theirs might easily slip, or 
have slipped already, into excess, or might be rendered to 
wrong objects. Still these words are to be taken not as a 
holding up to them of their sin, but as a captatio henevo- 
lenticB, and it must be confessed they are coarsely rendered 
in our Version. 

Acts XXV. 5. — " Let them, therefore, said he, which among 
you are able, go down." But ol dwaroi is not, " those 
which are able," but, " those which are in authority," as 
the Vulgate rightly, " qui potentes sunt :" see Losner, 
Ohss. in N. T. in loc. 

Rom. ii. 22. — •' Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou com- 
m'lt sacrilege V This is too general, and fails to bring out 



118 ON SOME WORDS 

with sufficient distinctness the charge which the Apostle 
in this hpofivXeig ; is making against the Jew. The charge 
is this : " Thou professest to abhor idols, and yet art so 
mastered by thy covetousness, that, if opportunity offers, 
thou wilt not scruple thyself to lay hands on these gold 
and silver abominations, and to make them thy own" (see 
Chrysostom, in loc). Read, " Thou that abhorrest idols, 
dost thou roh temples ?" 

Rom. xi. 8. — "According as it is written, God hath 
given them the spirit of slumber." Our Translators must 
have derived Kardw^ig from vvaratitiv, as indeed many 
others have done, before they could have given it this 
meaning. Yet they plainly have their misgiving in respect 
of the correctness of this etymology, for they propose 
* remorse' in the margin, evidently on the correcter hypo- 
thesis that the word is not from vv(TTaZ£iv, but vvaaeiv. 
Still, even if they had put ' remorse,' as the compunction of 
the soul (the Vulgate has ' compunctio'), into the text, 
though they would have been etymologically right, they 
would not have seized the exact force of Karaw^ig, at least 
in Hellenistic Greek ; as is plain from the service which it 
does in the Septuagint, and from the Hebrew words which 
it is there made to render. This is no place for entering 
at length into all (and it is much), which has been written 
on this word. Sufficient to say that it is properly the 
stupour or stupefaction, the astonishment, bringing ' asto- 
nishment' back to its stronger and earlier meaning, the stun- 
nedness (' Betaubung,' De Wette) consequent on a wound 
or blow, vvaativ, as 1 need hardly observe, being to strike 
as well as to pierce. ^ Torpor,' only that this so easily 
suggests the wrong etymology, and runs into the notion of 
deep sleep, would not be a bad rendering of it. ' Stupor' 
which the "Five Clergymen" have adopted, is perhaps 



WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 119 

better. Hammond, whose marginal emendations of the 
Authorized Version are often exceedingly valuable, and 
deserve more attention than they have received, being 
about the most valuable part of his book on the New 
Testament, has suggested ' senselessness \ but this is not 
one of his happiest emendations. 

Gal. i. 1 8. — " I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter." 
^loTopttv is not merely ' to see,' but properly, to inquire, 
to investigate, to interrogate, to arrive by personal know- 
ledge, ocular or other, at the actual knowledge of past 
events : and then, secondarily, to set down the results of 
these investigations, just as IcrTopia is first this investi- 
gation, and then, in a secondary sense, the result of it duly 
set down, or, as we say, ' history.' Here indeed it is a 
person, and not things, which are the object of this closer 
knowledge. "I went up to Jerusalem,'' says Paul, "to 
acquaint myself with Peter" f'accuratius cognoscere; 
itaque plus inest quam in verbo I^elv :" Winer). 

Gal. V. 20. — ^Seditions.' It is at first perplexing to 
find this as the rendering of SixofTTacFiai, which is evidently 
a word of wider reach ; but Archdeacon Hare has admi- 
rably accounted for its appearance in this place .^ I will 
quote his words : " When our Version is inaccurate or in- 
adequate, this does not arise, as it does throughout in the 
Bhemish Version, from a coincidence with the Vulgate ; yet 
its inadequate renderings often seem to have arisen from 
an imperfect apprehension of some Latin substitute for the 
word in the Greek text, — from taking some peculiar sense 
of the Latin word different from that in which it was used 
to represent the Greek original. Let me illustrate this by 
a single instance. Among the works of the flesh St. Paul 



Mission of the Comforter, p. 391, 



120 ON SOME WOEDS 

(Gal. V. 20) numbers ^tx<^o-rao-ta/, which we render 'sedi- 
tions/ But ' seditions' in our old, as well as our modem 
language, are only one form of the divisions implied by 
^i)(0(TTa(TLai, and assuredly not the form which would 
present itself foremost to the Apostle's mind when writing 
to the Galatians. At first, too, one is puzzled to understand 
how the word ' seditions' came to suggest itself in the place, 
instead of the more general term ' divisions/ which is the 
plain correspondent to ^Lxo<TTa(yiai, and is so used in 
Eom. xvi. 17, and in I Cor. iii. 3. Here the thought 
occurs that the Latin word ' seditio,' though in its ordinary 
acceptation equivalent to its English derivative, yet pri- 
marily and etymologically answers very closely to ^ixo- 
araaia ; and one is naturally led to conjecture that our 
Translators must have followed some Latin version, in which 
the word ' seditiones' was used, not without an affectation 
of archaic elegance. Now the Vulgate has ' dissensiones/ 
but in Erasmus, whose style was marked by that cha- 
racteristic, w^e find the very word ' seditiones.' Hence 
Tyndale, whom we know from his controvervsial writings, 
to have made use of Erasmus' version, took his 'sedition/ 
not minding that the sense in which Erasmus had used the 
Latin word, was alien to the English; and from Tyn- 
dale it has come down, with a mere change of number 
into our present Version ; while Wiclif and the Rhemish 
render the Vulgate by ' dissensions.' " 

Ephes. iv. 29. — " Let no corrupt communication proceed 
out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of 
edifying.^' But to justify these last words, to which Beza's 
" ad sedificationis usum" may have led the way, we should 
have found, not irpog olKO^o/uLriv rrig xpuag, but irphg or iig 
Xpdav Trig oiKodojjirjg. No one will affirm that we have such 
an hypallage here. There is much more in the words than 



WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 121 

such a translation, even were it allowable, would educe 
from them. It is not very easy to give, without circumlo- 
cution, a satisfactory English rendering ; but the meaning 
is abundantly clear. " Let such discourse,'' St. Paul would 
say, " proceed from your mouths as is fitted to the present 
need or occasion ; do not deal in vague, flat, unmeaning 
generalities, which would suit a thousand other cases 
equally well, and probably, therefore, equally ill ; let your 
words be what the words of wise men will always be, nails 
fastened in a sure place, words suiting the present time and 
the present person, being for the edifying of the occasion." 
" Edification of the need,'' Ellicott has it ; and De Wette, 
"zur Erbauung nach Bediirfniss." An admonition of a 
similar character is couched in the tl^ivai ttwq ^el Ivt 
lfcao-r(j) cnroKpLveaOaL of the parallel passage in the Colos- 
sians (iv. 6). Each man must have his own answer, that 
which meets his difficulties, his perplexities. There must 
not be one unfeeling, unsympathizing answer for all. 

Col. i. 1^.^ — " Who is the image of the invisible God, the 
first-horn of every creature" This is one of the very few 
renderings in our Version, I know not whether the only one, 
which obscures a great doctrinal truth, and, indeed, worse 
than this, seems to play into the hands of Arian error. For 
does it not legitimately follow on this " first-born of every 
creature," or " of all creation/' that He of whom this is pre- 
dicated must be Himself also a creature, although the first 
in the creation of God ? But in the phrase ttjowtotokoc 
7ra(Tr]Q KTiaeiiyg, we are not to regard irdar^g KridEwg as a 
partitive genitive, so that Christ is included in the " every 
creature," though distinguished as being the first-born 
among them, but rather as a genitive of comparison, de- 
pending on, and governed by, the irpiorog (see John i. 15, 
30) which lies in irptjroTOKog. I am not quite satisfied 



1'22 ON SOME WORDS 

with "born before every creature," or " brought forth before 
every creature \' because there lies in the original words a 
comparison between the begetting of the Son and the 
creation of the creature, and not merely an opposition ; He 
is placed at the head of a series, though essentially differing 
from, all that followed in the fact that He was born and they 
only created ; the great distinction between the y^wav (or 
TiKTHv, as it is here) and the ktIZslv, which came so pro- 
jninently forward in the Arian controversy, being here 
already marked. Still I could have no question as between 
it and the '' first born of every creature'' of our Version, 
which obviously suggests an erroneous meaning, though 
it may be just capable of receiving a right one. It was 
nothing unnatural that Waterland, who in the begin- 
ning of the last century fought the great battle of the 
English Church against the Arianism which claimed a 
right to exist in the very bosom of that Church, should 
have been very ill-content to find a most important testi- 
mony to the truth for which he was contending, foregone 
and renounced, so far at least as the English Translation 
reached — nay, more than this, the verse not merely taken 
away from him, but, in appearance at least, made over to his 
adversaries. In several places he complains of this, as in 
the following passage : " In respect of the words, ' first- 
born of every creature' comes not up to the force or 
meaning of the original. It should have been horn (or 
begotten) before the ivhole creation, as is manifest from 
the context, which gives the reason why He is said to be 
TTpwTOTOKOQ TTaGYjg KTiaEojQ. It is becausc He is ' before all 
things,' and because by Him were all things created. 
So that this very passage, which, as it stands in our Trans- 
lation, may seem to suppose the Son one of the creatures, 
does, when rightly understood, clearly exempt Him from 



WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 123 

the number of creatures. He was before all created being, 
and consequently was Himself uncreated, existing with the 
Father from all eternity/'^ 

Heb. xi. 29. — "Which the Egyptians assaying to do, 
were drowned." Did our Translators prefer the reading 
KaTairovTicrOrjcrav ? This is not very probable, the authority 
for it being so small. If they did not, and if they read, as 
is most likely, KareTroOriaav, they should have rendered it 
by some word of wider reach ; as, for instance, " were swal- 
lowed up,'' or "were engulphed'" ("devorati sunt,'' Yulgate; 
" verschlungen wurden," Bleek). " Swallowed up," besides 
being a better rendering, would more accurately set forth 
the historic fact. The pursuing armies of the Egyptians 
sunk in the sands quite as much as they were overwhelmed 
by the waves of the Ked Sea, as is expressly declared in 
the hymn of triumph which Moses composed on the occa- 
sion ; KariiTLEv avToitg yrj, Exod. XV. 12; cf Diodorus 
Siculus, i. 32 • i'tt' afxfxov KaraTriv^rai. 

Jam. i. 26. — " If any man among you seem to he reli- 
gious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own 
heart, this man's religion is vain." This verse, as it here 
stands, must, I am persuaded, have perplexed many. How 
can a man " seem to be religious," that is, present himself 
to others as such, when his religious pretensions are belied 
and refuted by the indulgence in an unbridled tongue ? 
But the perplexity has been introduced by our Translators, 
who have here failed to play the part of accurate synony- 
mists, and to draw the line sharply and distinctly between 
the verbs §o»caTv and (paiv^aOai. Aokeiv expresses the sub- 
jective mental opinion of anything which men form, their 
do^a about it, which may be right (Acts xv. 28 ; i Cor. 



1 Serm. 2, Chrisfs Divinity proved from Creation. 



124 ON SOME WORDS 

iv. 9), or which may be wrong (Matt. vi. 7 ; Mark vi. 49 ; 
Acts xxvii. 1^) ; (paivsaOai the objective external appearance 
which it presents, quite independent of men's conception 
about it. Thus, when Xenophon writes, ^alv^ro 'ix^ta 
"nnrdyv {Anah. i. 6, i), he would affirm that horses had 
been actually there, and left their tracks. Had he em- 
ployed the alternative word, it would have implied that 
Cyrus and his company took for tracks of horses what 
might have been, or what also very possibly might not 
have been, such at all. " Aokhv cernitur in opinione, quae 
falsa esse potest et vana. Sed (l>aLv^adai plerumque est in 
re extra mentem ; quamvis nemo opinatur.'' Apply this 
distinction to the passage before us; keep in mind that 
Sojcetv, and not (paiveaOai, is the word used, and all is plain : 
"If any man among you think hmiself religious ("se 
putat religiosum esse,'' Vulgate), and bridleth not his 
tongue, &c." It is his own subjective estimate of his 
spiritual condition which the word implies, an estimate 
which the following words declare to be entirely erroneous. 
— Let me observe here that the same rendering of ^ofcav, 
Gal. ii. 6. 9, gives a colour to St. Paul's words which they 
are very far from having ; as though there was a certain 
covert irony upon his part in regard of the pretensions of 
the three great Apostles whom he met at Jerusalem (" who 
seemed to be something" — "who seemed to he pillars";) 
whereas he does express not what they seemed or appeared, 
but what they by others were, and were rightly, held to be. 
The Geneva is here, as so often, correct ; correct also in 
making ^oKovvreg in both these verses a present, and not 
an imperfect, participle. 

Jude 12. — " Trees ivhose f omit withereth/' But (jtOivo- 
TTW/otvoc has here a meaning ascribed to it, which it no- 
where possesses, as though it were = wXeaiKapTrogj the 



WHpLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 125 

^OivoKapirog of Pindar, Pyth. iv. 265; or the 'frugiperdus' 
of Pliny. The (pOtvoirwpov is the late autumn, the autumn 
far spent, which succeeds the oTrivpa, or the autumn con- 
templated as the time of the ripened fruits of the earth ; 
and which has its name irapa to fOlvedOai rrjv oirwpav^ 
from the waning away of the autumn and the autumn 
fruits, themselves also often called the oiriLpa ; and (jiOivo- 
ir(t)piv6g is always used in the sense of belonging to the 
late autumn. The Latin language has no word which 
distinguishes the later autumn from the earlier, and, there- 
fore, the " arbores autumnales" of the Vulgate is a correct 
translation, and one as accurate as the language would 
allow, unless, indeed, it had been rendered, " arbores senes- 
centis autumni," or by some such phrase ; as De Wette 
in his German translation has it, ' sj^a^herbstliche.' We, 
I think, could scarcely get beyond "autumnal trees,"" or 
" trees of autumn," as the Rheims version gives it. These 
deceivers are likened by the Apostle to trees as they shew 
in late autumn, when foliage and fruit alike are gone. 
Bengel : "Arbor tali specie qualis est autumno extremo, 
sine foliis et pomis."' The (l)6ivoTrwpLva, aKapira, will then, 
in fact, mutually complete one another : " without leaves, 
without fruit.'' Tyndale, who throws together ^iv^pa 
<f)9ivo7rwpiva aKapira, and renders the whole phrase thus, 
" trees without fruit at gathering time," was feeling after, 
though he has not grasped, the right translation. 



CHAPTEU X. 

ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT AGAINST OUR 
VERSION. 

Q OME charges have been, and are still, not unfrequently 
*^made against our Version, which I am persuaded are 
unjust. There is one which so nearly touches the honour 
and good faith of its authors, that it can hardly be passed 
over. They are accused, as is familiar to many, of snatch- 
ing at unfair advantages, slurring over statements of Scrip- 
ture which seemed to make for an adversary, giving to 
others a turn which the truth would not warrant, and com- 
pelling them to bear a testimony in their own favour which 
these passages did not properly contain. They have been 
charged with this from two quarters. Thus, the Roman 
Catholics oftentimes complain that they have made pas- 
sages of Scripture to tell against Roman doctrine, which, 
fairly translated, would yield no such testimony against it ; 
while they have weakened or destroyed the witness of 
other passages, which, in a more honest version, would be 
found on the side of Rome, in the points at issue between 
her and the Reformed Church. The charge, a most grave 
and serious one indeed, of such deceitful handling of the 
Word of God, does not seem to me to have any foundation 
whatever. It was, of course, free to our Translators, and 
only natural, that in a passage like Heb. xiii. 4, they 
should incline to that interpretation, and adopt that ren- 
dering, which justified the abolition in the Reformed Church 
of the compulsory celibate of the clergy. The rendering of 



UNJUST CHARGES AGAINST OUR VERSION. 127 

iv iraaif " in all," i. e. " inter omnes'' (a masculine and not a 
neuter), was open to them; it was the interpretation of the 
words adopted by many of the ancient Fathers ; gram- 
matically, it can be perfectly justified ; it is accepted to 
the present day by many who are not in the least drawn 
to it by doctrinal, but purely by philological interests, and 
it is very idle to complain of them that they preferred it. 

It would be quite impossible to go through the several 
passages on which this charge is grounded ; such a course 
would carry me too far from the main purpose of these 
pages. I may, however, just mention one or two. The 
first is one where this charge has been sometimes allowed 
by writers of our own communion. Thus, Professor Stanley 
is inclined to ascribe to " theological fear or partiality" the 
rendering of i Cor. xi. 27, where, in St. PauFs statement, 
" Whosoever shall eat this bread or drink this cup of the 
Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of 
the Lord," they have substituted ^and' for ^or."* I have 
no suspicion that they did this "in order to avoid the 
inference that the Eucharist might be received under one 
kind." In the first place, there is authority for ' and ;"* 
I do not think suiBficient authority, but so much that 
an eminent scholar, like Fritzsche, with no theological 
leaning on one side or the other, even now prefers it. 
Moreover, such an inference from these words is so extra- 
vagantly absurd, so refuted by several other statements in 
this very chapter, that I cannot see how they should have 
cared to exclude it ; even had they been willing to sacrifice 
truth and honesty, they were under no temptation to do so. 
They probably accepted Kai as the right reading. 

Gal. V. 6. — Faith ''which worketh by love." It was 
for a long time a favourite charge of the Romanists, even 
in the face of their own Yulgate, which has rightly, 



128 ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT 

"fides quse per caritatem operatur," that we had given 
to Ivepyoviuivri an active sense, when it ought to have a 
passive, and that we had done so in the fear lest there 
should be found here any support for their doctrine of the 
" fides formata,'' as that which justifies. They would have 
had the words translated, " faith which is wrought on, 
i. e., animated, stirred up, by love." Other unfriendly 
critics have repeated the charge. There is no need, how- 
ever, to refute it, as the later Eoman Catholic expositors, 
Windischman for instance, in his valuable Commentary on 
this Epistle, have acknowledged the accuracy of our trans- 
lation, have accepted it as the true one ; and thus implicitly 
allowed the injustice of this charge. 

Indeed, it is not too much to say, that if, in the heat of 
earlier controversy, any shadow of unfair advantage might 
seem to have been taken by the first Protestant translators 
after the Reformation, those of King James's Bible were 
careful to forego and renounce everything of the kind. 
Thus it was a complaint, and as I must needs regard it, not 
an unreasonable one, on the part of Romish assailants of our 
earlier versions,^ that they rendered a^wXov ' image,' and 
not *idol;' and H^wXoXarpr^g "worshipper of images" 
and not "worshipper of idols'' or 'idolater;' that they 
thus confounded the honour paid in the Roman Church to 
images with the idol-worship of heathenism. They urged 
that however Protestants might reprobate and condemn 
the first, yet it was confessedly an entirely different thing 
from the last; while yet our Translators went out of 
their way, and departed from the more natural rendering 
of aSwXov, for the purpose of including both under a 
common reproach ; that by such renderings as this, " How 



* See Ward's Errata of the Protestant Bible, Dublin, 1810, p. 63. 



AGAINST OUR VERSION. 129 

agreeth the temple of God with images?" (2 Cor. vi. 16) 
they suggested and helped forward the destruction of these 
in all the churches through the land. The complaint was 
a just one, and our Translators seem to have so regarded 
it. They have nowhere employed the offensive rendering, 
but always used * idolater' and 'idol.' Thus compare 
I Cor. X. 7 ; I John v. 2 1, in our Version, with the same in 
the earlier Protestant versions; in the latter passage, 
indeed, the Geneva had anticipated this correction. 

Then, too, it has been sometimes said, I was inclined at 
one time to think with some reason, that other theolo- 
gical leanings, Calvinistic as against Arminian, were 
occasionally to be traced in our Translation, modifying 
consciously or unconsciously the rendering of some passages 
in it. These charges, I am now persuaded, are entirely 
without foundation. They mainly, though not exclusively, 
rest on the rendering of the two following places, Acts 
ii. ^7 ; Heb. x. 38. But what in each of these passages 
there is, or what some have considered there is, to find 
fault with, is capable of much easier explanation. It may 
be worth while to consider these passages. 

Acts iL 47. — Our Translators make St. Luke to say, 
" The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be 
saved." It is urged against them that in the original it is 
not Tovg awdr]aofxivovQ, which would alone have justified 
this rendering; but tovq awZojuevovg. The explanation, 
however, is sufficiently easy of their slight departing from 
an accurate rendering, without ascribing to them, or those 
who went before them in this translation, any dogmatic 
bias. They were perplexed with a language which spoke 
of those as already saved, who only became saved through 
being thus added to the Church of the living God. They 
probably did not clearly perceive that by this language the 



130 ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT 

sacred historian meant to say that in this act of adherence 
to the Church, and to Christ its Head, these converts were 
saved, delivered from the wrath to come ; " those that did 
escape," Hammond renders it. They had no wish, except 
to avoid a fancied difficulty, and I do not believe 
that the thought of predestination in the least entered into 
their minds, however others may have since employed the 
words as a support for the doctrine. Indeed, it is well 
worthy of note that the Rhemish version gives precisely the 
same future meaning to roue (rwZofxivovg, and renders, 
" they that should be saved."" 

Heb. X. 38. — " Now the just shall live by faith ; but if 
any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in 
him.'" Here, too, it has been often asserted, last of all by Pro- 
fessor Blunt, that the doctrinal tendencies of the Translators 
exercised an unwarrantable influence on the translation. 
No unprejudiced person, it has been said, can read the 
verse in the original, and not acknowledge that the person 
whose drawing back is supposed possible in the second 
clause of the verse is *the just" of the first clause. So 
Tyndale had translated it : " But the just shall live by 
faith ; and if he withdraw himself &c.'" — Coverdale and 
Cranmer in the same way. But this verse, so rendered, 
would have contradicted the doctrine of final perseverance ; 
and therefore, it is said, in the Geneva version ' any " was 
substituted for ' he," and ' any man," in our Version. No 
objection to the entire good faith of our Translators is 
oftener urged than this. Now I certainly think myself 
that ^iKaiog is the nominative to vTrocTrdXriTai, and that the 
passage does contradict the doctrine of final perseverance 
in its high Calvinistic or necessitarian shape. But to the 
present day, the other view of the passage, that namely of 
our Translation, which would disengage an avOpwirog or a Tig 



AGAINST OUR VERSION. 131 

from ^iKaiog, and make it the nominative to vTroo-rct'Xrjra^, is 
maintained by scholars such as De Wette and Winer, who 
are certainly as remote as well can be from any Calvinistic 
leanings. 

Leaving these passages which involve doctrine, I may 
just mention one other which has no such significance. 
In this, fault may be justly found, and has been found, with 
the words as they stand in our Version ; while yet I am 
convinced, though it is impossible to bring this to absolute 
proof, that the incorrectness is with the printers, and not with 
the Translators. I allude to Matt, xxiii. 24. " Which strain 
at a gnat " has been often objected to there. Long ago 
Bishop Lowth complained, " The impropriety of the prepo- 
sition has wholly destroyed the meaning of the phrase.'" I 
cannot doubt, as I have expressed elsewhere, that we have 
here a misprint, which having been passed over in the first 
edition of 161 1, has held its ground ever since ; nor yet 
that our Translators intended, " which strain out a gnat, 
and swallow a camel ; '' this being at once intelligible, and 
a correct rendering of the original ; while our Version, as 
at present it stands, is neither ; or only intelligible on the 
supposition, no doubt the supposition of most English 
readers, that " strain at " means, swallow with difficulty, 
men hardly *and with effort swallowing the little insect, but 
gulping down meanwhile, unconcerned, the huge animal. 
It need scarcely be said that this is very far from the 
meaning of the original words, 01 ^'ivXiZovrec tov KwvwTra, 
by Meyer rendered well, "percolando removentes muscam ;'* 
and by the Vulgate also not ill, " excolantes culicem ; " for 
which use of S'ivXiZeiv, as to cleanse by passing through a 
strainer, see Plutarch, Symp. vi. 7. 1. It was the custom 
of the more accurate and stricter Jews to strain their wine, 
vinegar, and other potables through linen or gauze, lest 

k2 



132 UNJUST CHARGES AGAINST OUR VERSION. 

unawares they should drink down some little unclean 
insect therein, and thus transgress Lev. xi. 20, 23, 41, 42 
— just as the Buddhists do now in Ceylon and Hindostan 
— and to this custom of theirs the Lord refers. A recent 
traveller in North Africa writes in an unpublished com- 
munication which he has been good enough to make to 
me — " In a ride from Tangier to Tetuan I observed that a 
Moorish soldier who accompanied me, when he drank, 
always unfolded the end of his turban and placed it over 
the mouth of his hota, drinking through the muslin, to 
strain out the gnats, whose larvae swarm in the water of 
that country/^ The further fact that our present Version 
rests to so great an extent on the three preceding, Tyn- 
dale's, Cranmer's, and the Geneva, and that all these have 
*' strain out," is additional evidence in confirmation of that 
about which for myself I feel no doubt, namely, that we 
have here an uncorrected error of the press. There was 
no such faultless accuracy in the first edition, as should 
make us unwilling to suppose this ; on the contrary, more 
than one mistake was subsequently discovered and re- 
moved. Thus it stood in the exemplar edition of 161 1, at 
1 Cor. iv. 9 — " God hath set forth us the apostles last, as 
it were approved to death/' yet * approved' was after- 
wards changed for the word no doubt intended, 'ap- 
pointed.' In another passage, I mean 1 Cor. xii. 28, 
the misprint, "helps m governments," after having retained 
its place in several successive editions, was afterwards in 
like manner removed, and the present correcter reading, 
"helps, governments" {avriX-nipeig, yvPepvimtg), substi- 
tuted in its room. 



CHAPTER XL 

ON THE BEST MEANS OF CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 

T HAVE tlius endeavoured to make as just an estimate 
-*- as I could of the merits, and, where such exist, of the 
defects, of our Authorized Version. In pointing out some 
of these last, I trust I have nowhere spoken a word 
inconsistent with the truest reverence for its authors, the 
profoundest gratitude to them for the treasure with which 
they have enriched the English Church. Such word I 
certainly have not intended to utter ; and I can truly say 
that if a close and minute examination of parts of their 
work reveals flaws which one had not suspected before, it 
also discovers a more than counterbalancing amount of 
merits, of which one had not hitherto been aware. 

A few words in conclusion. They shall be, — first, on the 
difficulties and dangers which manifestly beset a revision ; 
and, secondly, on the manner in which these might be best 
overcome. 

Among these difficulties, I will not more than touch on 
that of the formation of a Greek text which the revised 
Version should seek to represent; and yet it is a dif- 
ficulty of the most serious character. Let it once be 
recognized that any change is to take place, and it will 
be manifestly impossible to rest content with the text 
which our Translators used. Take cases, for instance, where 
every critical edition of later times, and on overwhelming 
evidence, has preferred some other readings to theirs. 



134) ON THE BEST MEANS OF 

And yet these cases of overwhelming evidence will not by 
any means be the hardest. It might not be so difficult to 
deal with them ; but how determine where the authorities 
are at all nearly balanced ? But satisfying myself with 
merely indicating this difficulty which presents itself at 
the very outset, I pass on to others. 

We must never leave out of sight that for a great mul- 
titude of readers the English Version is not the translation 
of an inspired Book, but is itself the inspired Book. And 
so far, of course, as it is a perfectly adequate counterpart 
of the original, this is true ; since the inspiration is not 
limited to those Hebrew or Greek words in which the 
Divine message was first communicated to men, but lives on 
in whatever words are a faithful and full representation of 
these ; nay, in words which fall short of this, to the extent 
of their adequacy. There, and there only, where any 
divergence exists between the original and the copy, the 
copy is less inspired than the original ; indeed, is not, to 
the extent of that divergence, inspired at all. But these 
distinctions are exactly of a kind which the body of Chris- 
tian people will not draw. The English Bible is to them 
all which the Hebrew Old Testament, which the Greek 
New Testament, is to the devout scholar. It receives from 
them the same undoubting affiance. They have never 
realized the fact that the Divine utterance was not made 
at the first in those very English words which they read in 
their cottages, and hear in their church. Who will not 
own that the little which this faith of theirs in the English 
Bible has in excess is nearly or quite harmless ? On the 
other hand, the harm would be incalculable, of any serious 
disturbance of this faith, supposing, as might only too 
easily happen, very much else to be disturbed with it. 

Neither can I count it an indifferent matter that a 



CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 135 

chief bond, indeed the chiefest, that binds the English 
Dissenters to us, and us to them, would thus be snapt 
asunder. Out of the fact that Nonconformity had not 
for the most part fixed itself into actual and formal sepa- 
ration from the Church till some time after our Authorized 
Version was made, it has followed that when the Noncon- 
formists parted from us, they carried with them this 
Translation, and continued to use and to cherish it, regard- 
ing it as much their own as ours. The Roman Catholics 
and the Unitarians are, I believe, the only bodies who 
have counted it necessary to make versions of their own. 
With the exception of these, the Authorized Version is com- 
mon ground for all in England who call themselves Chris- 
tians, is alike the heritage of all. But even if English 
Dissenters acknowledged the necessity of a revision, which 
I conclude from many indications that they do, it is idle 
to expect that they would accept such at our hands. Two 
things then might happen. Either they would adhere to 
the old Authorized Version, which is not indeed very 
probable ; or they would carry out a revision, it might be 
two or three, of their own. In either case the ground of a 
common Scripture, of an English Bible which they and we 
hold equally sacred, would be taken from us ; the separa- 
tion and division, which are now the sorrow and perplexity 
and shame of England, would become more marked, more 
deeply fixed than ever. Then, further, while of course it 
would be comparatively easy to invite our brethren of the 
Episcopal Church in America to take share in our revision, 
yet many causes might hinder their acceptance of this 
invitation, or their acquiescence in the work as we found 
it expedient to do it. Thus the issue might only to 
easily be that we should lose in respect of them also the 
common ground of one and the same Scripture, which we 



136 ON THE BEST MEANS OF 

now possess. Such a loss, either in regard of the English 
Dissenters, or American Churchmen, would not be a slight 
one, nor one deserving to be regarded with indifference. 

Another most serious consideration presents itself. Will 
one revision satisfy? If conducted with moderation, it will 
probably leave much untouched, about which it will still be 
possible to raise a question. Is it not inevitable that after 
a longer or shorter period another revision, and on that 
another, will be called for ? Will not in this way all sense 
of stability pass away from our English Scripture ? And 
to look at a mere material fact — The Bibles in the hands of 
our people, in what agreement with one another will they 
be ? It is idle to expect that the great body of our popula- 
tion will keep pace with successive changes, and provide 
themselves with the latest revision. Inability to meet the 
expense, or unwillingness to do so, or a love of the old to 
which they have grown accustomed, a foregone conclusion 
that the changes are for the worse, or that they are im- 
material, lack of interest in the subject, will all combine to 
hinder this. The inconveniences, and much more than 
inconveniences, of such a state of things, assuredly will not 
be slight. This prospect indeed so little alarms the author 
of an article in the Edinburgh Review, " On the State of 
the English Bible,"' that he proposes the institution of a 
permanent Commission, which shall be always altering, 
always embodying in a new and improved edition the 
latest allowed results of Biblical criticism. It was startling 
enough to read somewhere else a proposal that the 
Authorized Version should be revised once in every fifty 
years ; but this proposal, if one could suppose there was 
the slightest chance that it would be acceded to, is most 
alarming of all. 

These are the main arguments, as it seems to me, against 



CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 137 

a revision of our Version. None will deny their weight. 
Indeed there are times when the whole matter presents 
itself as so full of difficulty and doubtful hazard, that one 
could be well content to resign all gains that would accrue 
from this revision, and only ask that all things might remain 
as they were. But this, I am persuaded, is impossible : 
however we may be disposed to let the question alone, it will 
not let us alone. It has been too effectually stirred ever 
again to go to sleep ; and the difficulties, be they few or 
many, will have one day to be encountered. The time will 
come when the inconveniences of remaining where we are 
will be so manifestly greater than the inconveniences of 
action, that this last will become inevitable. There will be 
danger in both courses, for that word of the Latin moralist 
is a profoundly true one, "Nunquam periclura sine 
periclo vincitur \^' but the lesser danger will have to be 
chosen ; and that will be in the course which I desire, not 
that we should now take, but should prepare ourselves for 
hereafter taking, should regard as one toward which we 
are inevitably approaching. 

In respect of the actual steps which it will be then 
advisable to take, I cannot think that even when the mat- 
ter is seriously undertaken, there should be for a con- 
siderable time any interference with the English text. Let 
come together, and if possible not of self-will, but with some 
authorization, royal or ecclesiastical, or both, such a body of 
scholars and divines as would deserve and would obtain 
the confidence of the whole Church. Fortunately, no 
points at issue among ourselves threaten to come into dis- 
cussion or debate ; so that the unhappy divisions of our 
time would not here add any additional embarrassment to 
a matter embarrassed enough already. Nay, of such 
immense importance would it be to carry with us, in what- 



138 ON THE BEST MEANS OF 

ever might be done, the whole Christian people of England, 
that it would be desirable to invite all scholars, all who 
represented any important portion of the Biblical scholar- 
ship in the land, to assist with their suggestions here, even 
though they might not belong to the Church. Of course 
they would be asked as scholars, not as Dissenters. But it 
were a matter so deeply to be regretted, that these should 
revise, and we should revise, thus parting company in the 
one thing which now holds us strongly together, while it 
would be so hopeless, indeed so unreasonable, to expect 
that they should accept our revision, having themselves 
had no voice in it, that we ought not to stand on any 
punctilios here, but should be prepared rather to sacrifice 
everything non-essential for the averting of such a catas- 
trophe. Setting aside, then, the so-called Baptists, who of 
course could not be invited, seeing that they demand not 
a translation of the Scripture, but an interpretation, and that 
in their own sense, there are no matters of doctrine or even 
of discipline likely to come into debate, which should render 
it impossible for such Dissenters as accept our doctrinal 
articles to take a share in this work, — as regarded not from 
its ecclesiastical, but its scholarly point of view. All points 
likely to come under discussion would be points of pure 
scholarship, or would only involve that universal Chris- 
tianity common to them and us ; or if more than this, they 
would be points about which there is equally a difference 
of opinion within the Church as in the bodies without it, 
for instance, as between Arminian and Calvinist, which 
difference would not be avoided by their absence. 

Let, then, such a body as this, inspiring confidence at 
once by their piety, their learning, and their prudence, 
draw out such a list of emendations as were lifted beyond 
all doubt in the eye of every one whose voice had any 



CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 139 

right to be heard on the matter ; avoiding all luxury of 
emendation, abstaining from all which was not of primary 
necessity, from much in which they might have fitly 
allowed themselves, if they had not been building on foun- 
dations already laid, and which could not without great 
inconvenience be disturbed — using the same moderation 
here which Jerome used in his revision of the Latin. Let 
them very briefly, but with just as much learned explanation 
as should be needful, justify these emendations, where they 
were not self-evident. Let them, if this should be their 
conviction, express their sense of the desirableness that 
these should at some future day be introduced into the 
received text, as bringing it into more perfect accord and 
harmony with the original Scripture. Having done this, 
let them leave these emendations to ripen in the public 
mind, gradually to commend themselves to all students of 
God's holy Word. Supposing the emendations such as 
ought to, and would, do this, there would probably ere 
long be a general desire for their admission into the text ; 
and in due time this admission might follow. All abrupt 
change would thus be avoided — all forcing of alterations on 
those not as yet prepared to receive them. That which at 
length came in would excite no surprise, no perplexity, or 
at most very little, having already in the minds of many 
displaced that of which it now at length took openly the 
room. 

It is quite true that " no man having drunk old wine, 
straightway desireth new ; for he saith, The old is better f 
but it is on that word' straightway' that the emphasis, in this 
saying of our Lord, must be laid. In those spiritual things 
to which we transfer this saying, a man may, and will, if 
he is wise, after a while desire the new. It may have a 
certain unwelcome harshness and austerity at the first ; 



140 ON THE BEST MEANS OF 

the man may have to overcome that custom which is as a 
second nature, before he heartily affects it. But still, just 
as our ancestors grew gradually in love with our present 
Translation, Churchmen weaning themselves from the 
Bishops' Bible,. and Puritans from the Geneva, — -just as one 
and the other of these versions fell quite out of use, 
though living on, the latter especially, for some time after 
they had been formally superseded by the present Version, 
Churchmen and Puritans finally agreeing in the decision, 
not that the old was better, but the new, so will it be here. 
What amount of difficulty those who lived in the reign of 
James the First found in reconciling themselves to the 
change, it is hard to say. We have curiously little on the 
subject in the contemporary religious literature, the very 
absence of such notices seeming to imply that the difficulty 
was not very great ; but in one respect it ought to be 
much less now, inasmuch as, careful as our then Trans- 
lators were not to change wantonly for mere change's sake, 
still the alterations which they made were considerable, 
many times more than would be necessary or desirable now. 
And even if it w^ere never thought good that this final 
step should be taken, that these emendations should be 
transferred to the text, what an invaluable help to students 
of Scripture such a volume might prove. With a little 
management, its more learned portions might be so sepa- 
rated off in notes as to leave the chief part of it accessible 
even to the English reader, who might thus be put in 
possession, though in a somewhat roundabout and less 
effectual way, of all which a revision would have given 
him. If, too, he had been shaken by rumours of the inac- 
curacy of his English Bible, he might here see, on the 
warrant of those best qualified to judge, how very little 
way this inaccuracy reached, in what comparatively un- 



CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 141 

essential matters it moved. Granting that nothing else 
should come of it, such a volume might prove an effectual 
check to wanton and mischievous agitations, if such there 
have been, or hereafter shall be, in this matter. 

In another way it might be found that the very unsettle- 
ment of men's minds, consequent upon the stirring of 
this question, might not be itself without a compensating 
gain. That very unsettlement in regard of the words in 
which God's message has hitherto been conveyed to them, 
might it not prove for some a motive to a more accurate 
considering of the message itself, a happy breaking of that 
crust of formality which by long habit so easily overgrows 
our reading of the Scripture ? It would not be, I think, 
for most of us unprofitable to discover that the words 
in which the truth has been hitherto conveyed to us, are 
exchangeable for other, in some places, it may be, for 
better words. The shock, unpleasant as it might prove at 
the first, might yet be a startling of many from a dull, 
lethargic, unprofitable reading of God's Word ; while in the 
rousing of the energies of the mind to defend the old, or, 
before admitting, thoroughly to prove the new, more 
insight into it might be gained, with more grasp of its 
deeper meaning, than years of lazy familiarity would have 
given. For, indeed, according to a profound proverb, "What 
is ever seen is never seen ;" and a daily familiarity with 
Scripture, full as it is of unutterable blessings, carries its 
dangers with it, dangers which the course that is here 
urged might effect much to remove. 

This much I have thought it desirable to say on this 
momentous subject. I am not so sanguine as to believe 
that, ^vith all these precautions, great and serious, it might 
be unexpected, difficulties would not attend the undertak- 
ing. There would need no little wisdom and prudence to 



142 BEST MEANS OF CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 

bring it to a successful end. Still it might be humbly 
hoped that by Him who is ever with his Church this 
prudence and this wisdom would be granted. And, lastly, 
let me observe that when we make much of the inconve- 
niences which must attend any such step, we ought never 
to leave out of sight their transitory character, as con- 
trasted with the permanent character of the gain. How 
large an amount of inconvenience men have willingly 
encountered with only some worldly object in view, where 
they have felt that the inconvenience would be only tem- 
porary, the gain enduring — as in the rectification of the 
coinage, the readjustment of the calendar. And here too, 
serious as the inconvenience might be at the first, and for a 
time, still it would every day be growing slighter : it would 
be but for a few years at the longest ; while the gain, 
always supposing the work to be well and wisely done, 
would be for ever ; it would be riches and strength for the 
English Church to the end of time. 



INDEX OF PKINCIPAL TEXTS CONSIDEEED. 



Matt. v. 21 . . 




Page 78 


Luke xvii. 21 






Page 80 


„ vi. 27 . 






103 


„ xviii. 12 








95 


„ viii. 20 . . 






1^3 


„ xxi. 19 








9S 


„ ix. 0^6 . 






79 


„ xxiii. 42 








91 


„ X. 4 . . 






113 












„ X. 16 . . 






79 


John ii. 8, 9 








58 


„ xii. 23 . 






lOl 


„ iii. 10 








87 


„ xiv. 8 . 






114 


„ iii. II, 32 








SI 


„ xiv. 13 . 






"^ 


„ iv. 6 . 








90 


„ xvi. 15 . 






30 


„ iv. 29 








102 


„ XX. I, II 






^l 


„ V. 16 . 








99 


„ xxi. 41 . 






56 


„ ix. 31 . . 








29 


„ xxii. 3, 4, i^ 






65 


„ X. 16 . 








69 


„ xxiii. 24 . 






13^ 


„ xii. 6 . 








. 104 


„ xxiii. 25 . 






19 


„ xvii. 12 








. 70 


„ xxviii. 14 






72 


Acts ii. 47 . 








. 129 


Maek ii. j 8 






96 


„ iii. I . 








g6 


„ iii. 18 . 






113 


„ iii. 13, 26 






, 68 


„ vi. 20 






80 


„ iv. 27, 30 






. 68 


„ vii. 4 






80 


» vii. 47 • 






42 


„ xi. 4 






• IT5 


„ X. 12 . 








. 100 


„ xi. 17 . 






72 


„ xii. 4 . 








21 


„ xii. 16 






. 116 


„ xii. 19 . 








■ 76 


„ xvi. 2 . 






97 


„ xiv. [3 . 
„ xvi. 2, 7 








. 116 
90 


Luke i. 19 . . 






97 


„ xvii. 18 








. 24 


„ i. 59 . . 






96 


„ xvii. 23 








• 15 


„ 11. 49 • • 






. 104 


„ xvii. 22 








. 116 


M v.6 . . 






96 


„ xix. 37 








16 


„ xii. 25 . 






■ 103 


„ xxi. 15 








16 


„ xiii. 7 . 






■ H 


„ XXV. 5 








. 117 


„ xiii. 2 . 






• 98 


„ xxvii. 10, 21 






• 57 


„ xiv. 7 






• 96 


„ xxvi. 2, 7 








90 



144 INDEX OF PRINCIPAL TEXTS CONSIDERED. 



Acts xxviii. 4 

EoM. i. 26, 27 
„ ii. 14 . 
„ ii- 22 . 
„ iii- 25 . 

„ viii. 21 

„ xi. 8 . 

„ xi. 2 . 

„ XV. 4 . 

1 Cor. iii. 17 

„ xi. 27 

2 CoE. ii. 14 

„ ii. 17 
„ V. 10 
» xi- 3 

Gal. i. 18 . 

« ii- ^» 9 

„ iii. 22 . 

„ V.6 . 

„ V. 20 . 

Ephes. iv. 3 
„ iv. 18 
„ iv. 29 

Phil. ii. 15 . 

Col. i. 13 

„ i. 15 

„ i. 16 

„ ii.8 

. „ ii. 18 

„ ii- 23 



1 Thess. iv. 6 

2 Thess. ii. 6 



Fage 94 



105 
89 

117 
66 

88 

46 
118 
116 

57 

55 
127 

106 
107 

99 

92 

119 
124 

56 

127 

119 

17 

73 



99 

46 
121 

98 

109 

81 

no 

82 
74 

57 



I Tim. 



V.4 
vi. 2 

vi-5 
vi. 8 

vi. 9 



Heb. iv. I . 

„ iv. 8 . 

„ V. 2 . 

„ V.8 . 

„ V. II . 

„ vi. 7 

„ ix-5 ■ 

„ ix. 23 , 

„ :^. 38 

„ xi. 10 , 

„ xi. 13 

„ xi. 29 

„ xii. 16 

„ xiii. 4 



Jam. 


i. 
i. 


4,5 
26 


>j 


iii. 5 


5> 


V 


•9 


I Pet. 


i. 17 


55 




iv. 9 



2 Pet. i. j — 7 

„ i- 14 - 
„ iii. 12 

JuDE 12 . 

Rev. iii. 2 . 

„ iv- 4 • 

„ iv. 5 V 

„ iv. 6 — 9 

„ xvi. 2 . 

„ xvii. 14 

„ xxi. 12 

„ xxi. 19, 20 



INDEX OF GREEK WORDS. 



"Ai^Tjs Paffe 63 

OKepaios 79 

a.iJL(podos . . . . . . 11^ 

direiOeta 6^ 

cLTnaTia 6^ 

anoKapaboKia , .... 77 

"Aprefiis 3p 

avXrj 69 

^aardCa lOj 

^dros ....... X16 

^ePrjXos 77 

yeevva 6^ 

8€i<riBaifia)v II7 

dlOKOVOS 6^ 

dixoaraa-la 1 19 

doK€(o 123 

doXoco 108 

BovXos 65 

dvpuTos 117 

eiSoff . 74 

els 91 

iv 91 

'Ep/t^ff. Sg 

ippifJLfievos 79 

^aov 64 

rjXiKia 103 

Brjplov 64 

Opiafi^evco 106 

Opovos 53 

lepoa-vXeco 1 1 8 

i<rTopeco 1 19 

KavaviTTjs 1 14 

KaTrrfXevco 107 

Kara^pa^evo) 81 

Kordw^is 118 

KaraTTLva) 122 



Karapyeo} Fage 6 1 

Karaa-KTjvaats 1 1 3 

kXivt) 80 

K6(f)ivos ...... 67 

KTaop-ai 95 

Kvpios ....... 49 

Xoyos 2>^ 

XoyiCopat 53 

p,dyos . 49 

perdvoia . . . . . . ^6 

fjL€Tpi07radiai 83 

6po(.o7ra6r]s HO 

TTOis Qeov 68 

TrapdKXijTOs 49 

Trdpeais 66 

^^Cfi 115 

7roi.p,vT] 69 

7r/3o/3i/3a^a) 1 1 5 

TTpatTOTOKOS 12 1 

TTcopcoa-Ls 74 

)ioy 4S 

)ivos 45 

cre^acrpa I^ 

(TK€Tracrp,a Ill 

(ro<p6s 66 

(TTTvpis 68 

o-vXaycoyeo) 109 

avvTTjpeo) 80 

Trjpio) yo 

vXrj Ill 

V7r68€iyp,a 83 

(f)alvo[jLai 123 

(pXvapos 77 

cf)divo7raypiv6s 1 24 

<pp6vLp.os 66 

^vXacrcro) .... . JO 



INDEX OF OTHER WORDS. 



Alms Fage 28 

Apollo, Apollos .... 43 

Beast 64 

Bribery ...... 19 

By and bye 20 

Canaanite 113 

Carriage 16 

Cherubim 30 

Church J 6 

Chrysolite 45 

Chrysoprasus .... 4^ 

Comforter 49 

Cretes, Cretlans .... 44 

Cumber ...... 14 

Depaet 19 

Devotion i^ 

Diana 39 

Eastee 21 

Elias, Elijah 41 

Endeavour 17 

Goodman 58 

Grudge 21 

Idol 128 

Image ■ . 128 

Its 27 

Jesus 42 

Jewry 22 



Joshua Page 42 

Miletus 44 

Mercurius 39 

Nephew ...... 17 

Noisome 20 

Often ..'.... 29 

Peegamos 44 

Pcenitentia ^6 

Pattern 83 

Eeligious 117 

Eesipiscentia 36 

Eiches 28 

Saedine stone .... 45 

Sardius 4^ 

Sedition 120 

Sermo ;i6 

Thought 13 

Timotheus, Timothy . . 44 

Three Taverns .... 45 

Trouble 71 

Uebane 42 

Veebum ^6 

Which 32 

Wizard 49 



THE END. 



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